Satellite megaconstellations will threaten space-based astronomy

Satellite megaconstellations will threaten space-based astronomy

Authors: Alejandro S. Borlaff, Pamela M. Marcum, Steve B. Howell.

Contact: a.s.borlaff@nasa.gov

Nature - Publication date: December 3rd, 2025. 
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-09759-5
Article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09759-5

This repository contains the results from a series of simulations of satellite
trails in space telescopes. In particular, the properties listed contain the
position, velocity, and surface brightness of satellite trails, as well as the
properties related to the observers, Hubble Space Telescope, SPHEREx,
Xuntian, and ARRAKIHS (Future F-class ESA mission). In addition to the 
science data (described below) the repository contains three media resources
(outreach media images and videos).

Science data:

The repository contains all the data produced on the article. 
These are organized in two folders with 4 files each, one per telescope.

.
 |-TRAILS
 | |-HST_sat_trails.csv
 | |-ARRAKIHS_sat_trails.csv
 | |-SPHEREx_sat_trails.csv
 | |-CSST_sat_trails.csv
 | |- ntrails_vs_nsats_table.csv

 |-SPECTRA
 | |-SPHEREx_trail_flux.fits
 | |-HST_trail_flux.fits
 | |-ARRAKIHS_trail_flux.fits
 | |-CSST_trail_flux.fits
 | |- mu_vs_wave.csv

 |-ReadMe.txt

TRAILS contains five astropy csv tables, containing the properties of the
satellite trail observations, divided by telescope and exposure
(track_id / nsats), and the average properties per number of satellites (ntrails_vs_nsats_table.csv)
Consult the header on each table for more details a
bout the columns.

SPECTRA contains four multiextension FITS files, containing the spectral
energy distribution of the satellite trails as a function of wavelength,
and the average properties per wavelength (mu_vs_wave.csv).
The structure of the FITS files is:

0      INFO            no-data         0
1      WAVELENGTH      float64         100       # Contains the wavelength for the spectra (in m)
2      TOTAL_FLUX      float64         NTRAILSx100  # Total surface brightness for each trail [Axis 0: Trail, Axis 1: Wavelength]
3      EARTHSHINE      float64         NTRAILSx100  # Surface brightness produced by Earthshine [Axis 0: Trail, Axis 1: Wavelength]
4      MOONSHINE       float64         NTRAILSx100  # Surface brightness produced by Moonshine [Axis 0: Trail, Axis 1: Wavelength]
5      SUNSHINE        float64         NTRAILSx100  # Surface brightness produced by Sunshine [Axis 0: Trail, Axis 1: Wavelength]
6      THERMAL_SUN     float64         NTRAILSx100  # Surface brightness produced by Earth reflected thermal emission [Axis 0: Trail, Axis 1: Wavelength]
7      THERMAL_SAT     float64         NTRAILSx100  # Surface brightness produced by Thermal satellite emission [Axis 0: Trail, Axis 1: Wavelength]

See also:

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-09759-5
Article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09759-5