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A California-based startup’s controversial plan to place 4,000 tennis-court-sized mirrors in orbit round Earth is “catastrophic” and “horrifying,” astronomers warn.
Reflect Orbital, which was based in 2021, has just lately taken step one in a scheme to promote daylight at night time by bouncing photo voltaic rays off big “reflectors” that may redirect the very important useful resource virtually anyplace on our planet. By doing this, the corporate goals to increase daytime in particular places, thus permitting paying prospects to generate solar energy, develop crops and substitute city lighting.
As its first step, Reflect Orbital recently submitted an application to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to launch its first test satellite, EARENDIL-1, in early 2026. If this application is granted and the initial tests are successful, the startup envisions launching as many as 4,000 similar satellites by 2030, company representatives recently told Live Science’s sister site Space.com.
Once in low Earth orbit (LEO), EARENDIL-1 would unfurl a sq. reflector as much as 59 ft (18 meters) throughout, giving it a floor space of round 3,500 sq. ft (325 sq. meters). This would permit the mirror to light up a single patch of Earth’s floor as much as 3 miles (5 kilometers) throughout at a time. From the bottom, the sunshine inside one in all these patches could be as much as 4 instances brighter than the full moon, the corporate representatives mentioned.
However, future reflectors within the deliberate constellation may have mirrors as much as 177 ft (54 m) throughout, which might doubtless create bigger and extra intense shiny spots.
Reflect Orbital mentioned it could reduce the consequences of its gentle air pollution by rotating the mirrors away from Earth once they’re not in use. “Our service is highly localized,” firm representatives instructed Space.com. “Each reflection covers a defined area for a finite period of time rather than providing continuous or widespread illumination.”
However, these reassurances have performed little to place scientists comfy.
“A terrible idea”
The reflectors would orbit Earth in a sun-synchronous orbit, which would cause them to circle Earth from pole to pole, perpendicular to the planet’s spin. They would be positioned to constantly align over the day-night divide on our planet, essentially allowing the mirrors to bounce sun’s rays from the daylight side onto locations that are dark. In theory, this would illuminate areas just after sunset or before dawn.
But while the basic physics behind this idea is solid, experts say it is much easier said than done — and they are skeptical that the company could pull it off.
Their plan “is flawed from the outset, technically speaking,” Fionagh Thomson, a researcher at Durham University in England who makes a speciality of area ethics, instructed Live Science in an e mail. “It is highly unlikely to come to fruition due to the complexity of the engineering involved, and trying to operate through busy orbits such as LEO.”
In truth, this concept has been tried — and subsequently deserted — earlier than. In 1993 and 1999, Russia tried to launch two related reflectors, dubbed the Znamya satellites, however canceled this system after struggling to manage the satellites, which each shortly burned up within the environment. (No different reflectors have been launched since.)
Researchers writing in The Conversation and Big Think have additionally questioned whether or not the mirrors are able to delivering one of many firm’s future flagship companies: producing solar energy.
In idea, the mirrors may very well be used to shine gentle on big photo voltaic farms on the planet’s floor, thereby extending the period of time they’ll create electrical energy. However, the ensuing gentle could be 1000’s of instances weaker than the noon solar, which means the illuminated panels would generate a tiny fraction of their regular power. Moreover, a single mirror may focus gentle onto the identical spot for a most of solely 4 minutes at a time, the researchers predict.
Even if the mirrors may collectively generate sufficient power, it could be “eye-wateringly expensive” in contrast with different types of renewable power, Thomson mentioned.
All in all, “this is a terrible idea,” Samantha Lawler, an astronomer on the University of Regina in Canada, instructed Live Science in an e mail. However, there may be nonetheless an honest probability that the EARENDIL-1 mission shall be authorised by the FCC, she speculated.
Blinded by the light
A single mirror is unlikely to have a major impact on the night sky. But if Reflect Orbital’s proposed constellation is realized, astronomers say it will be increasingly hard to study the stars beyond the glare of thousands of “new stars” zooming across the night sky.
Robert Massey, deputy government director on the U.Ok.’s Royal Astronomical Society, instructed Space.com that the astronomical group was “seriously concerned about the development, its impact and the precedent it sets.”
While different spacecraft, corresponding to SpaceX’s Starlink satellites, by chance mirror gentle towards Earth’s floor, astronomers are notably fearful by the deliberate era of sunshine air pollution proposed by Reflect Orbital.
“The central goal of this project is to light up the sky and extend daylight, and obviously, from an astronomical perspective, that’s pretty catastrophic,” Massey mentioned.
For unfortunate stargazers who ended up in one of many mirrors’ shiny spots, it could even be virtually unattainable to see every other stars within the night time sky, Lawler mentioned. Past research into this idea has additionally proven that staring immediately on the reflectors via a telescope or binoculars may trigger eye harm, she added.
Given {that a} mirror may very well be all of a sudden rotated or repositioned at any location on Earth with out warning, there is no such thing as a assured manner of avoiding this. And sudden flashing from a reflector’s motion may additionally distract plane pilots throughout takeoff or touchdown, with doubtlessly disastrous penalties, a number of specialists have mentioned.
Past analysis on gentle air pollution has additionally proven that it could alter the conduct of a big selection of animals and plant species, in addition to disrupt human sleep cycles.
“One tiny company in California can, with a few million dollars and the approval of a single U.S. federal agency, change the night sky for everyone in the world,” Lawler mentioned. “It’s horrifying.”
Additional points
While astronomers are principally involved in regards to the gentle air pollution and the invisible radio pollution these mirrors will likely create, the planned swarm could prove dangerous in other ways.
For example, the mirrors’ large size makes them more likely to be hit by micrometeorites or the rapidly multiplying bits of space junk that encircle our planet, Lawler said. This could leave the reflectors “riddled with holes,” which would make them harder to control, she added.
If operators lost control of a mirror, it could end up spinning out, similar to NASA’s Advanced Composite Solar Sail System, which began tumbling end over end after being deployed in August 2024. If this happened, the mirrors would uncontrollably flash across the night sky.
Additionally, the number of planned satellites across the globe is already higher than the number of spacecraft that experts predict can safely operate in LEO. And the new reflectors would eventually fall back to Earth at the end of their operational lifespan, which could lead to issues such as atmospheric metal pollution.
As for the potential wildlife impacts of the project, Reflect Orbital has committed to carrying out an environmental risk assessment, but only after EARENDIL-1 is launched, according to Space.com.
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