A New Space Race Could Turn the Night Sky Into a Permanent Light Show

A new study by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) warns that current plans to deploy more than 1.7 million satellites in Earth's orbit could cause serious damage to ground-based astronomy. To preserve the capabilities of modern telescopes, the total number of spacecraft in low Earth orbit should remain below 100,000, provided the satellites maintain low visibility. Since 2019, the number of satellites in orbit has grown rapidly and now exceeds 14,000, largely because of Starlink, developed by SpaceX. The situation could change dramatically in the coming years as additional large-scale projects move forward. Satellite Expansion Could Reshape the Night Sky Beyond SpaceX's plans for orbital data centers, several other initiatives are under development, including E-Space with its Cinnamon constellation, as well as China's CTC-1 and CTC-2 systems. Together, these projects involve the launch of hundreds of thousands of additional satellites.