The Battle to Protect Dark Skies from Satellites

Astronomers are being urged to "fight tooth and nail" to protect the night sky against rising light pollution caused by artificial urban lighting on Earth and satellites congesting low Earth orbit. A new paper argues that current efforts by astronomers are mitigating the problem of light pollution in astronomy but will not solve it unless strict and immediate regulations are enforced. The authors propose tightening the criteria to authorize massive satellite constellations and enforcing an upper limit for the number of orbiting satellites and the amount of artificial light produced.