Astronomers Warn About Starlink's Impact on Hubble Space Telescope

pcmag.com:

Astronomers have already been raising alarm bells about satellites, including those from Starlink, photo-bombing telescope observations from Earth. But now a new study warns the same satellites risk one day disrupting images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. 

As The New York Times reports(Opens in a new window), a group of researchers published a paper(Opens in a new window) on Thursday, examining the percentage of archived Hubble Space observations that contain satellite streaks running through the images. 

The good news is that only 2.7% of the images contained satellite streaks, making the problem relatively minor. However, the researchers say the satellite streaks grew over time. From 2018 to 2021, the satellite photo-bombing reached 4.3% of the observations for Hubble’s ACS camera system(Opens in a new window), which is up from 2.8% during the 2002 to 2005 time span. 

It’s possible SpaceX’s Starlink is partly responsible for the uptick. Starting in 2019, the company began launching dozens of satellites to build out the orbital internet system. 

The study notes Starlink satellites travel about a dozen kilometers or more above the Hubble Space Telescope, which orbits Earth at 535 kilometers. The relatively close proximity means Starlink “will appear less frequently in the images since there will be fewer visible to HST, but they will produce broader trails,” the researchers wrote. 

“Assuming that an artificial satellite will pass at only 100 km from the pointing of HST, the 3 m Starlink satellite will produce a wide band of 6″ or 120 pixels across the ACS detector, which might have an impact on the scientific exploitation of the HST data,” they added. 

However, SpaceX is pushing back on worries its satellites will