WASHINGTON, Dec 3 (Reuters) – An exponential increase in the number of satellites placed in low-Earth orbit has brought advances in telecommunications including broadband access in rural and remote areas worldwide. It also has caused a surge in light pollution in space that imperils the work done by orbiting astronomical observatories.

A new NASA-led study focusing on four space telescopes – two currently operational and two planned – estimates that a large percentage of images obtained by these observatories over the next decade could be tainted by light emitted or reflected by satellites sharing their low-Earth orbit.

The researchers calculated that about 40% of images taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and about 96% of those taken by the U.S. space agency’s SPHEREx observatory cou

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