Overview
- A NASA-led analysis in Nature simulates four missions—Hubble, SPHEREx, Xuntian and ESA’s ARRAKIHS—and finds more than 96% of images from the latter three would include at least one satellite trail, while about 40% of Hubble images would be affected.
- The study estimates average streak counts of roughly 6 per SPHEREx exposure, about 70 for ARRAKIHS and about 92 for Xuntian, with around 2 for Hubble.
- Mission leads for ARRAKIHS contest key assumptions, saying the telescope will mostly point away from Earth and that the fraction of each image polluted could be smaller than the study suggests.
- Authors propose limiting constellation altitudes, maintaining comprehensive catalogs of spacecraft and debris, and sharing far more precise orbital trajectories, while outside experts doubt such mitigation is practical at required precision.
- Astronomers also flag radio-frequency leakage and a busier orbital environment that threaten sensitive radio studies and complicate operations through increased interference, scattered light and potential avoidance maneuvers.