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Hubble space telescope is being photobombed, study finds

SpaceX largely to blame, as more and more images of the cosmos feature an artificial satellite in the shot

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It’s a common problem. You’re on a trip, you see a magnificent view that you’d like to photograph – and then some unthinking person blunders into the frame, ruining your shot.

And it’s not even unique to Earth. A recent study in the journal Nature Astronomy reveals that the Hubble Space Telescope – a stalwart orbiting observatory, launched in 1990 – is being regularly photobombed by younger, smaller satellites.

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In the 33 years that the telescope has been in low-Earth orbit, space traffic has increased considerably, with Elon Musk’s SpaceX often singled out for blame. Its Starlink program aims to provide global cellphone and internet service from space, and has already launched some 3,500 small satellites into orbit, with thousands more planned.

Most will orbit in two shells, one approximately 530 km up, the other at about 610 km. Hubble orbits at around 538 km, barely clearing one of those regions, and having to peer through increasingly cluttered space in the other.

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The study, led by Sandor Kruk at the Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Munich, combed through almost two decades of images taken by the Hubble telescope, relying on both citizen volunteers and a machine learning algorithm to identify streaks in the images that were likely made by passing satellites.

The researchers found that the chance of seeing a satellite in a Hubble image was approximately 3.7 per cent from 2009 to 2020, but that in the following year that increased to 5.9 per cent, a jump they attribute to the launch of the Starlink cluster and other new satellites. Sometimes multiple streaks showed up in a single photo.

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The researchers point out that satellite traffic poses more than just an optical risk to the Hubble. As they run out of manoeuvring propellant and power, “the other concern is that these artificial satellites will become space debris, increasing the amount of space junk and the potential of HST colliding with a debris object.” In the tourist analogy, imagine you’re lining up the perfect vacation photo when someone bumps into you – but at supersonic speeds.

Hubble telescope in orbit
The Hubble telescope, launched in 1990, orbits at about 538 km. Photo by NASA

The study doesn’t propose a solution to the problem, though it does note that “stacking,” in which multiple images are combined and averaged out to eliminate background noise, can help to reduce the number of times a passing satellite mars an image.

And, ironically, SpaceX may come to the rescue, in a manner of speaking. Last fall it was announced that it was conducting a study into the feasibility of using a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule to visit the elderly telescope and nudge it into a higher orbit. In the 14 years since Hubble was last serviced by visiting astronauts aboard the space shuttle, its orbit has dropped by more than 30 km. The boost would let it remain in orbit longer, and might also take it out of harm’s way of any dead Starlink satellites.

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Of course, in many ways the Hubble has been usurped in the public’s imagination by the James Webb Space Telescope, which left Earth on Christmas Day, 2021, and started beaming back images of the cosmos last summer. Its orbit near the Lagrange point between the Earth and the sun places it about 1.5 million km away, or roughly four times the distance to the moon. It’s the wealthy backpacker who decided to get far away from the rest of the tourists so it could enjoy the view in peace.

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