According to the study, there were 1,562 Starlink satellites and 320 One Web satellites in orbit as of the date of this analysis. And the total number of satellites should increase by the 2030s. Nature Astronomy estimates this number between 60,000 and 100,000 for the next few years.
However, the researchers are not sounding the alarm bell, but want to prepare the ground: “With the increasing number of artificial satellites currently planned, the fraction of Hubble Space Telescope images traversed by satellites will increase over the next decade and require further study and monitoring.”
Last important points: terrestrial telescopes are, for the moment, less concerned. “For terrestrial telescopes, we lose about 1% of observations during the first and last hour of the night,” say the researchers. Finally, the James-Webb telescope is spared from these problems, because he sails 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, which allows him to avoid all these troubles.