Published August 26, 2026 07:54AM
On a chilly winter evening, deep in Yellowstone National Park, a group of people gathers in a geyser basin. Huddled together for warmth, they look upward, following the line of a green laser pointer as their guide uses it to trace the stars into the shapes of Orion the Hunter and the giant M forming the constellation Cassiopeia.
Suddenly, someone spots something moving in the sky: a single, unblinking white light. The crowd gets excited, musing about what the object might be. But for stargazing guide Alexandra Trunnell, these white lights are a familiar and disheartening sight. Too small and steady to be airplanes and too slow to be meteors, they are satellites, including Starlink—thousands of which fly across the sky every night, interrupting the view of the stars.
“My guests and I typically see our first satellite within minutes,” says Trunnell, who has been leading observatory tours and stargazing evenings across the country for more than a decade, including as the lead astronomer for Yellowstone Safari Company.
“Many first-time stargazers assume that satellites are shooting stars, which breaks my heart because actual shooting stars [meteors] are so spectacular!” she shares. “Shooting stars are brief, brilliant flashes of light that streak across a small portion of sky for just a moment. Satellites, on the other hand, look like drifting stars—single points of light that plod across the entire sky for several minutes.”
The Growing Satellite Problem
The growing number of satellites littering our skies is an increasingly serious problem highlighted by astronomers, cultural heritage experts and nature conservationists. In 2018, only a few thousand satellites were orbiting the Earth, mainly used for science and geopolitical reasons, such as weather forecasting and intelligence. But in May 2019, Elon Musk’s company, SpaceX, launched its first set of Starlink satellites, a so-called “megaconstellation” consisting of 60 satellites launched in a string-of-pearls formation. These were the first of 12,000 satellites that had been approved by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Even back then, it was estimated that, by 2030, there would be more than 100,000 satellites in orbit, the vast majority owned and operated by private firms. That forecast is growing by the day.
“When I was first leading stargazing tours over a decade ago, spotting satellites was a fun rarity,” says Trunnell. “I’d point out the International Space Station to my guests whenever possible, and I used to point out the very bright ‘flares’ from the old Iridium satellites. This was especially effective at warning guests about the potential impact of massive satellite constellations. It’s become so much worse in just a few years.”
Trunnell explains that in 2019, there were fewer than 3,000 active satellites in orbit; today, that number has increased to more than 15,000. The majority of those are Starlink satellites, which have launched with unprecedented frequency.
“Now, we see satellites crossing the sky constantly,” she says.
Today, hundreds of private companies are operating satellites in low Earth orbit, the major players being SpaceX (Starlink), Eutelsat (formerly OneWeb) and Amazon’s Project Kuiper. In January 2026, SpaceX took its plans much further and applied for a license to launch one million satellites into orbit that would serve as AI data centers.
Protecting Dark Skies in National Parks
The natural nighttime environment at parks like Yellowstone and Grand Canyon, which includes very dark skies, is crucial for functioning ecosystems, the food web and human health. Studies have shown that satellite-reflected light disrupts natural behavior patterns of migratory species, including birds, pollinators and sea turtles. Creatures that navigate by the stars use a ‘centre of rotation’ to identify stars around the pole star to find their way north. Studies already show that satellites are increasing the background sky brightness by reflecting sunlight at night. This can cause confusion and disorientation for migratory species. DarkSky International is an organization working to protect and restore our nights. For decades, this conservation work was focused on ground-based light pollution originating from infrastructure in cities and populated areas.
But satellites represent an entirely new and far more unpredictable risk, because they are not confined to light-polluted areas or even to U.S. airspace. Satellites orbit the whole planet and frequently fly over otherwise protected places, national parks, heritage areas, Indigenous lands and dark sky preserves. Currently, the only existing legislation on satellites is the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which only governs weapons and very general concepts. This means that private space companies are free to do whatever they want as long as they get FCC clearance to launch from the United States, even if it disrupts the skies over a foreign country, a scientific telescope or a protected natural place.
Michael Rymer, DarkSky International’s Dark Sky Communities Program Manager, says that, while the land within the boundaries of a national park is protected from damaging activities, the same is not true of the sky.
“I couldn’t just build a gas station in the middle of Grand Canyon National Park,” explains Rymer. “What I could do if I had enough money is release 10,000 satellites that would fly above every national park at any given time of the night. Everything within the terrestrial boundaries of a national park is protected by law, but everything above the terrestrial plane seems to lack that level of protection.”
While it’s true that some satellites are important and useful to the public, the mass numbers of satellites being sent up now are owned by private companies and used for commercial purposes, such as providing Internet in the backcountry or, in the case of Musk’s new plans, building AI data centers in low Earth orbit.
Another company—Reflect Orbital—has just been granted permission from the FCC to begin testing a plan that would see them launch up to 50,000 new satellites that would be used as flying mirrors to reflect light down to the ground and create “sunlight on demand” for solar farms or urban street lighting at night. DarkSky has issued an open letter to Reflect Orbital and its investors urging them to pause their plans until an environmental impact assessment has been undertaken.
The Impact of Satellites on Recreation and Science is Big
According to park ranger Rader Lane, dark skies are a natural resource that allow visitors to experience the night environment in the same way people have for thousands of years. Lane is an interpretive ranger at Grand Canyon National Park, which is a certified International Dark Sky Park with a popular stargazing program. He has noticed a large uptick in the number of satellites over the world wonder in recent years.
“As a ‘dark sky ranger’ for the National Park Service, I stand underneath pristine night skies for a living, connecting tens of thousands of visitors per year to the cosmos through constellation talks and telescope viewing. Over the last six years, the number of visible satellites in the sky has grown exponentially,” he says.
Satellites are particularly noticeable in photography and telescope and radio images, where they leave streaks of light that mar photographs and ruin the images and radio signals that scientists use to study the cosmos.
Bettymaya Foott is an astrophotographer whose work has been featured by National Geographic, Sky & Telescope and the National Park Service. She says the night sky “creates its own beautiful patterns and rhythms of light and dark, bright stars and dim stars, speckled against the dark night sky and the glowing dust lanes of the Milky Way.” She calls satellites “visible scars” that disrupt the natural rhythm that photographers are trying to capture.
Alexandra Trunnell has had a similar experience with astrophotography in Yellowstone, but also emphasizes the negative impacts that satellites can have on science.
“Ground-based observatories require very precise brightness measurements of various stars in a section of the sky,” says Trunnell. “Satellites affect these measurements, creating additional noise and reducing the precision of our data. It jeopardizes our ability to learn more about our universe.”
What’s in Store for the Future of our Night Skies?
So, is the future dark or bright for our night skies? Science and conservation organizations like DarkSky International, the International Astronomical Union and the American Astronomical Society continue to raise the alarm over the mass proliferation of satellites and are seeking solutions at the highest level. Regular meetings at the United Nations have brought together its Office of Outer Space Affairs with international astronomical institutions and private satellite companies for talks. However, to date, no international regulations have been implemented.
Lane says that, until we begin to see the night sky as an intrinsic part of the wilderness experience, we won’t know what is at stake.
“One of the reasons we preserve national parks is to connect with a sense of the sublime. The night sky is one of the foundational pillars of the natural world upon which humanity can achieve this sense of the sublime. Standing underneath the stars humbles us into greater understandings of ourselves, of the divine and of nature itself.”
