\n<\/p>\n
For astronomers, the sky isn\u2019t exactly falling\u2014yet the sky-high ambitions of tech companies seeking profits in Earth orbit and beyond are becoming too disruptive to ignore. SpaceX\u2019s Starlink Internet service, built with thousands of telescope-photobombing satellites, is the poster child for this problematic trend, but it\u2019s not alone. The latest start-up with brash out-of-this-world plans is Reflect Orbital, which has built a business case for beaming sunlight from orbit to power solar farms after dark. The company, based in Hawthorne, Calif., next to SpaceX\u2019s former headquarters, recently sought a license from the Federal Communications Commission to launch its first satellite in 2026 and plans to put thousands more in orbit.<\/p>\n
Maybe that could work. But experts have technological, environmental and safety concerns. Marketed as \u201csunlight on demand,\u201d Reflect Orbital\u2019s high-frontier initiative is just one among many; other companies in the proliferating space industry want to launch space advertisements, human remains and made-to-order artificial meteor showers. Such wide-ranging\u2014and, to some, objectionable\u2014projects are part of an ongoing shift from government-sponsored science or defense-focused missions to a new, commerce-dominated space era.<\/p>\n
The satellite that Reflect Orbital aims to loft in 2026 is a test spacecraft dubbed EARENDIL-1\u2014a Lord of the Rings\u2013inspired name that, like many other tech companies and products that reference the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, would probably make the anti-industrial author roll in his grave.<\/p>\n
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Once the satellite reaches its approximately 600-kilometer-high orbit, it will deploy a giant 18-by-18-meter mirror to redirect sunlight down to targets on Earth. (The mirror\u2019s area is twice the size of a volleyball court.) In addition to describing the solar-power-boosting benefit of the technology, the company\u2019s website advertises other applications, too, such as \u201cunforgettable\u201d sunlit evenings at \u201centertainment venues, corporate events, and urban public spaces.\u201d Reflect Orbital is financed by investors, including Sequoia Capital and the billionaire Baiju Bhatt, and is supported by a $1.25-million Small Business Innovation Research contract from the U.S. Air Force as well.<\/p>\n
Reflect Orbital\u2019s project comes with many engineering challenges, however. \u201cIt\u2019s simple but not easy,\u201d says Darren McKnight, a systems engineer and senior technical fellow at LeoLabs, a spacecraft- and debris-tracking company based in Menlo Park, Calif. \u201cPeople look at each individual technology and say, \u2018See, it\u2019s possible,\u2019 but don\u2019t put it all together.\u201d<\/p>\n
Overheating and station-keeping could be big problems for the sprawling, sunbathed satellite, as could the precise control required to pinpoint a reflected beam onto targets far below. The beam would also shed some of its energy in the atmosphere, with the potential for clouds and inclement weather to dramatically degrade its intensity. Overcoming these overlapping challenges would be a tall order, and the transmission losses alone could be astronomical across such vast distances, McKnight says. Reflect Orbital isn\u2019t the first organization to attempt giant mirrors in space for the purpose of beaming sunlight onto Earth: Russian space agency scientists pursued and even launched a prototype spacecraft in the 1990s before ultimately abandoning the effort.<\/p>\n
Reacting to the company\u2019s announcements, a group of astronomers produced a fact sheet on October 6. It stated, \u201cThere are already solutions right here on Earth to many of the problems \u2018sunlight as a service\u2019 purports to solve. This approach is simply a reckless and inefficient use of Earth orbit, a precious and finite resource.\u201d In a statement to Scientific American, Reflect Orbital\u2019s chief strategy officer Ally Stone said the company \u201cis committed to protecting dark skies,\u201d and that its first missions would involve \u201ctightly controlled light spots steered well away from observatories and sensitive areas.\u201d<\/p>\n
If the company\u2019s plans come to fruition, following its tests next year it will begin launching more mirror-toting satellites, ultimately building a mega constellation of 4,000 by 2030. Each would be capable of casting a 5 km-wide beam about four times brighter than the full moon down to Earth. But atmospheric scattering would ensure that some light escapes each beam, says John Barentine, a Tucson, Ariz.\u2013based astronomer and executive officer of Dark Sky Consulting, which advises companies and city officials on outdoor lighting use. \u201cWe\u2019ve calculated that, even relatively far from the beam, the [satellites] would still have an apparent brightness that would make them among the brightest objects in the night sky,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Large numbers of satellites in low-Earth orbit are crucial to Reflect Orbital\u2019s plans because a daisy-chain approach is required to consistently illuminate a target on the ground. A single satellite there could only beam sunlight to a surface target for some four minutes before flying out of range, whereupon another satellite would take over with its own beam. This process could continue for an hour or two during twilight and dawn. In addition to the potential effects on ground-based astronomical observatories, which already struggle to study the universe through existing levels of light pollution, Barentine fears the beaming could also have dire consequences for nocturnal wildlife\u2014as well as the celestial views of everyday stargazers.<\/p>\n
Besides Reflect Orbital\u2019s planned fleet of satellites, he cites other companies\u2019 bright spacecraft\u2014not only SpaceX\u2019s Starlink mega constellation, which now includes more than 8,000 among its ranks, but also Amazon\u2019s growing Project Kuiper satellite fleet. Other problematic projects are AST SpaceMobile\u2019s BlueBird satellites and its BlueWalker 3 prototype, which Barentine and his colleagues have shown to be exceptionally bright.<\/p>\n
Reflect Orbital\u2019s plan isn\u2019t an isolated phenomenon, says Jordan Bimm, a space historian and an assistant professor of science communication at the University of Chicago. \u201cHumans have been sending weird stuff to space for a while,\u201d he says. Numerous times, NASA astronauts have brought up various trinkets or smuggled items to space, including an unauthorized corned beef sandwich taken on the Gemini III mission in 1965 and a gorilla suit brought to the International Space Station in 2016. Furthermore, robotic missions have often included \u201cfestooning,\u201d stowing or bolting small, nontechnical elements that don\u2019t directly involve the mission on landers and rovers, often for public engagement or other purposes.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut there\u2019s zany, and then there\u2019s deeply concerning,\u201d Bimm says. The past few years have brought multiple contentious space projects and concepts: For the first test flight of its Falcon Heavy rocket in 2018, SpaceX launched an entire Tesla Roadster into space, where the gradual, chaotic effects of orbital mechanics could eventually push it on a collision course with Earth or Mars. The following year live tardigrades were crash-landed on the surface of the moon via the Beresheet spacecraft, operated by the Israel-based nonprofit SpaceIL, which may have constituted a technical breach of planetary protection protocols. And not one but two companies had \u201clunar memorial services\u201d (that is, cremated human remains) as payloads onboard last year\u2019s Astrobotic lunar lander, which failed in Earth orbit. In addition, a Russian company, Avant Space, seeks to launch space ads into orbit, where they would also contaminate the night sky. And the Japanese company ALE wants to deploy spacecraft that would generate high-visibility artificial meteor showers on demand.<\/p>\n
The trend extends into proposals for commercial space infrastructure as well. Tech companies such as Nvidia and Hewlett Packard Enterprise have begun exploring the feasibility of launching solar-powered space-based data centers, and space-tech titans Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk have each recently voiced vigorous support for the idea. And of course, billionaires themselves have traveled to space, including founders of companies that are leading efforts to design the first commercial space stations, which may gain prominence when government facilities such as the International Space Station cease operations.<\/p>\n
For most of the 20th century, space activities remained largely the purview of powerful nations, with an initial emphasis on cold-war-era military applications, followed by more science-centric \u201csoft power\u201d feats such as moon landings, interplanetary missions and orbital telescopes, Bimm points out. But in the 21st century, lower launch costs and better spacecraft designs have allowed myriad commercial schemes and a host of new opportunities and controversies.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s currently limited national and international oversight of many of these commercial space projects, but it doesn\u2019t have to be that way, argues Aaron Boley, a planetary scientist at the University of British Columbia and co-founder of the Outer Space Institute, a network of space experts. \u201cIn general, nation states remain responsible for authorizing and supervising their respective commercial space activities,\u201d but some regulations need updating, he says. For U.S.-based companies, that means oversight is critical from regulatory agencies such as the Federal Aviation Administration and the Federal Communications Commission, and other countries should make similar efforts, he says. In addition, the bedrock of space law, the Outer Space Treaty, states the overarching principle that countries must have \u201cdue regard\u201d for others, which ultimately means that it\u2019s everyone\u2019s shared responsibility to protect Earth orbit and the moon as a common heritage for humanity.<\/p>\n
Boley and other experts don\u2019t oppose companies pursuing far-out proposals per se. Investing \u201cstrategic R&D\u201d in an ambitious idea that might not pan out anytime soon sometimes yields unexpected science and technology breakthroughs, McKnight says.<\/p>\n
But potential innovations can\u2019t be the only consideration, Bimm says. \u201cI\u2019m not against being bold in space,\u201d he says. \u201cI think being bold is important, but you must also be thoughtful.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For astronomers, the sky isn\u2019t exactly falling\u2014yet the sky-high ambitions of tech companies seeking profits in Earth orbit and beyond are becoming too disruptive to ignore. SpaceX\u2019s Starlink Internet service, built with thousands of telescope-photobombing satellites, is the poster child for this problematic trend, but it\u2019s not alone. The latest start-up with brash out-of-this-world plans<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32403,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[4222,695,1870,5579,18707,10262,480,1679,1101],"class_list":{"0":"post-32402","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-alarm","9":"tag-commercial","10":"tag-giant","11":"tag-grows","12":"tag-mirrors","13":"tag-orbit","14":"tag-plans","15":"tag-proposed","16":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}