Estimates for the total number of Milky Way satellites are typically derived from observed satellites in surveys, corrections for survey completeness, and theoretical models of halo assembly that include disruption by the Milky Way's stellar disc. A new preprint examines how varying degrees of resilience to this disc disruption influence inferred satellite populations. Using an N-body simulation of a single Milky Way-mass halo combined with a toy model for disruption, the authors tested different resilience levels. They employed a fictional all-sky survey to illustrate that high resilience to disc disruption leads to small satellite populations that are radially concentrated near the central galaxy and hosted by massive subhaloes. Low resilience, by contrast, predicts substantially more satellites with a less concentrated radial distribution residing in less massive subhaloes. The most massive subhaloes are particularly susceptible to disruption owing to their radial orbits; in their absence, galaxy formation occurs in lower-mass haloes that exhibit a shallower radial number density profile. The researchers demonstrate these effects using a combination of the Pan-STARRS and DES surveys. The preprint, which has not been peer-reviewed, relies on a single simulation and a simplified toy model, limiting its generalizability. It is therefore essential to incorporate uncertainty in the disc disruption radius when predicting Milky Way satellite distributions. Source: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.23600