The 1.7 million satellites that companies are aiming to launch into Earth's orbit in the coming years will have "devastating consequences for astronomy," new research warned Wednesday.

The plans to swarm Earth with huge, extremely bright satellites represent an "existential threat" to telescopes viewing the universe, according to the European Southern Observatory (ESO), which conducted the research.

To retain humanity's ability to properly explore the night sky, the team of researchers called for a maximum limit of 100,000 satellites orbiting Earth.

The study is the first to calculate how much the constellations of big and particularly bright satellites being planned would affect astronomical observations by making the night sky brighter.

The number of satellites orbiting Earth has now reached 14,000 after surging in recent years, many of them part of trillionaire Elon Musk's Starlink internet constellation.

But that is just the start.

Musk's SpaceX has announced plans to launch more than 1 million satellites by 2028 to serve as data centers powering the artificial intelligence boom.

Other projects such as the "Cinnamon" plans of startup E-Space and Chinese constellations CTC-1 and CTC-2 would add hundreds of thousands more satellites spinning around our planet.

And U.S. startup Reflect Orbital hopes to launch 50,000 huge satellites that use giant mirrors to point sunlight back down to Earth, with the aim of providing light during the night.

In total, more than 1.7 million satellites could soon be lighting up the night sky, obscuring or blotting out the view of ground-based telescopes.