Published: December 5, 2025 Key takeaways What’s new: a landmark Nature study raises the alarm On December 3, 2025, Nature published a peer‑reviewed paper titled “Satellite megaconstellations will threaten space‑based astronomy,” authored by NASA researchers Alejandro S. Borlaff, Pamela M. Marcum and Steve B. Howell. Nature Their work tackles a question that, until now, had mainly worried ground‑based observatories: what happens to space telescopes when low‑Earth orbit fills up with hundreds of thousands of bright satellites? Using filings to regulators such as the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the team modeled a future in which LEO hosts around half a million satellites by the