1.7 Million Satellites Will Have ‘Devastating Consequences,’ Study Says
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- Science1.7 Million Satellites Will Have ‘Devastating Consequences,’ Study Says By Jamie Carter,
- Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights.
- This image shows satellites crossing the night sky above the northern Atacama Desert in Chile, over a period of just one hour.
Science1.7 Million Satellites Will Have ‘Devastating Consequences,’ Study Says By Jamie Carter,
Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. An award-winning reporter writing about stargazing and the night sky.Follow Author Jul 02, 2026, 02:27am EDTTopline. A new study by the European Southern Observatory warns that plans to launch more than 1.7 million satellites into orbit could have “devastating consequences for astronomy,” making the night sky brighter and reducing scientists’ ability to observe the galaxy and the universe beyond. SpaceX is set to build a new economy in low Earth orbit, expanding its current Starlink telecommunications constellation and adding orbital AI data centers and even wirelessly transmitted solar power from space. The study — only the latest to warn about the scientific and environmental dangers of crowding Earth’s orbit — concludes that Earth orbit should be limited to no more than 100,000 faint satellites, all below naked-eye visibility, to protect modern ground-based astronomy. According to Orbital Radar, there are currently 17,501 satellites orbiting Earth — 10,000 of them active SpaceX Starlink satellites.
This image shows satellites crossing the night sky above the northern Atacama Desert in Chile, over a period of just one hour. It is a stack of a time-lapse video taken on 15 October 2025 about two hours after sunset. A few streaks are caused by planes, and can be easily identified by their blinking-coloured lights, but most trails are due to satellites. In the foreground we see the dome of ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), the world’s largest optical/infrared telescope, currently under construction atop Cerro Armazones. Behind it we see the lasers of ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) at Paranal Observatory, 22 km away from the ELT.F. Kamphues, ESO/M. KornmesserKey FactsThe peer-reviewed research, led by ESO astronomer Olivier Hainaut and accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics, is the first to calculate how large and bright satellite constellations could affect astronomical observations by increasing background sky brightness.