Astronomers have warned that light pollution from the growing number of satellites orbiting the Earth is a ‘global threat to the natural environment’.
Since 2019, the number of satellites in near-Earth orbit has more than doubled.
Five years ago, the American company SpaceX launched the first ‘mega-constellation’ consisting of thousands of satellites and now plans to send thousands more satellites less than 2,000 kilometers from Earth.
Each new satellite increases the risk that it will collide with another object orbiting Earth and create more debris.
This process can create a chain reaction whereby collisions between orbiting bodies create tiny pieces of debris. Thus, the clouds of ‘space debris’ illuminating the earth are increased.
In a series of papers published in the journal Nature Astronomy, astronomers warned that this increasing light pollution threatens the future of their field.
In a paper, the researchers said it was the first time they had estimated how much a bright night sky would affect the operation of a major observatory financially and scientifically.