The launch, which could take place this summer, is just a beta test of the basic technology, but Reflect Orbital—which bills itself as “The Sunlight Company”—has big things in mind. If this first satellite proves itself, mission planners envision lofting 36 satellites by next year, 5,000 by 2030, and a staggering 50,000 by 2035.
Read more: What We Lose When We Can't Stargaze
“Astronomers worry that a constellation of orbital mirrors like Reflect Orbital is planning might compromise the ability to view the night skies,” says John Logsdon, professor emeritus at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, where he was long-time director of the school’s Space Policy Institute.
The company’s initial efforts will be modest. The first satellite, named Eärendil-1—after the Old English word for morning star—will shed only as much light as a full moon, across a 6,000-acre area, or about the size of an airport. And that faint illumination will not last long—just five minutes before the satellite, which will be orbiting 400 miles up at 17,500 miles per hour, moves out of range. But if the first launch succeeds, those metrics could change fast. By next year, the 36 satellites that are projected to be aloft will be able to reflect down the equivalent of nighttime street lighting, with multiple mirrors at different spots in orbit cooperating to provide 2.5 hours of light. The 5,000 satellites planned for 2030 will produce the equivalent of daylight for a few minutes at a time, the equivalent of indoor lighting for up to two hours, and all-night street lighting. And the 50,000-strong flock in 2035 will produce an as-yet unspecified number of hours of daylight illumination and ‘round the clock indoor-level lighting to customers who request it.
“The atmosphere is dynamic and turbulent, catching, throwing, and bouncing photons like mobile trampolines; that’s what gives us effects like stars twinkling at night,” says Lindsay DeMarchi, a policy analyst with The Aerospace Corporation’s Center for Space Policy and Strategy. “That’s many opportunities for interactions … to spread out or scatter light as photons travel from space to Earth’s surface.”
“AAS opposes the granting of a license to Reflect Orbital, because this application is fundamentally different from those for telecommunications satellites,” the letter argued. “The proposed satellite would be intentionally reflecting sunlight to Earth and is designed to be as bright as possible, making impacts on astronomical research extremely challenging to mitigate.”
He also argues that the satellite constellation he proposes to place in space could save lives here on Earth. “During the Venezuelan earthquakes,” Nowack says, “a dozen people reached out and said, ‘Hey, when it got dark, it was really hard to find people in the rubble. Is there any way you could light up the area and help aid emergency responders in saving all these lives?’”
For better or worse, the space mirror is coming—and potentially soon. Since the human species was born, it has lived under the canopy of the stars. Now we are preparing to change that canopy.
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