{"id":218917,"date":"2025-12-06T18:20:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-06T18:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/218917\/"},"modified":"2025-12-06T18:20:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-06T18:20:08","slug":"spacex-is-now-threatening-the-hubble-nasa-warns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/218917\/","title":{"rendered":"SpaceX Is Now Threatening the Hubble, NASA Warns"},"content":{"rendered":"

Numerous stories have been written about the growing swarm of Starlink<\/a> satellites<\/a> in low earth orbit (LEO) over the past few years, as astronomers grow increasingly worried about the crafts\u2019 impact on their observation equipment. Launched by Elon Musk\u2019s SpaceX, each satellite has the potential to disrupt astronomy through both radio emissions and light pollution \u2014 and as the number of satellites grows, so too does the amount of interference.<\/p>\n

Now, a new study<\/a> by researchers at NASA is warning that obstructions caused by SpaceX and other private satellite companies are becoming so severe that not even the Hubble Space Telescope is safe.<\/p>\n

As reported by El Pais<\/a>, the research was led by led by Spanish astrophysicist Alejandro Serrano Borlaff at NASA. In the study, Borlaff concludes that one out of every three Hubble images will become contaminated by light pollution if satellite projects planned for the next decade come to fruition.<\/p>\n

Currently, SpaceX has permission from the US Federal Communications Commission to launch 12,000 satellites<\/a> into LEO, and is eyeing an additional 30,000<\/a> over the next few years. All told, the researchers argue that current satellite constellations could be joined by as many as 500,000 more over the next decade.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the first scientific study whose main objective is to investigate the effects of light pollution on space telescopes, taking into account these plans announced by the industry,\u201d Borlaff told El Pais.<\/p>\n

Hubble is far from the only space telescope affected, and future astronomy craft will likely fare much worse. According to Borlaff and his team, bright streaks of light are projected to appear in 96 percent of the images from the European Space Agency\u2019s ARRAKIHS, which is eying a launch window<\/a> sometime in the 2030s.<\/p>\n

NASA\u2019s recently launched SPHEREx, meanwhile, could see upward of 99 percent of its images contaminated with light pollution.<\/p>\n

Whether this future comes to pass remains to be seen, but there\u2018s <\/strong>precious little time to roll back the clock. Any efforts to mitigate this harm to the astronomical community will require international regulators to band together and limit commercial activity<\/a> in LEO \u2014 something which spacefaring countries like the US<\/a> seem hesitant to commit to.<\/p>\n

More on satellites: <\/strong>Elon Musk\u2019s Satellites Now Constantly Falling Out of the Sky<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Numerous stories have been written about the growing swarm of Starlink satellites in low earth orbit (LEO) over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":218918,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[270],"tags":[118406,18,118407,118405,3095,19,17,82264,1024,6144,133,451,2731],"class_list":{"0":"post-218917","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-alejandro-serrano-borlaff","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-el-pais","11":"tag-hubble-images","12":"tag-hubble-space-telescope","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-light-pollution","16":"tag-nasa","17":"tag-satellites","18":"tag-science","19":"tag-space","20":"tag-spacex"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115674010269852620","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}