The Dark Aspect of Placing Mirrors in Area

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Should daylight be delivered on demand, regardless of the time of day?

One firm is toying with this godlike act. Reflect Orbital recently applied for a federal license to trial this idea in April 2026. During this check, an orbiting satellite tv for pc will unfurl a 60-by-60-foot mirror and goal daylight to particular websites on Earth. The purpose is to launch a constellation of some 4,000 of those huge mirrors by 2030, increasing the world’s entry to photo voltaic power and growing availability throughout peak-use hours within the morning and night time.

The firm says the constellation may additionally enhance crop yield and illuminate rescue efforts, protection operations, and whole cities. Reflect Orbital even claims prospects may finally “order sunlight to your exact coordinates at any time.”

But these beams may intrude with telescopes’ views—and astronomers are already coping with surging mild air pollution around the globe and up in area. Most astronomers say the constellation would have an effect on their work, in keeping with an August survey from the American Astronomical Society.

This would “be like having the full moon up every night, and that will be devastating to astronomy,” Siegfried Eggl, co-lead of the International Astronomical Union’s Center for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky, told Gizmodo. In response to such criticisms, Reflect Orbital told Bloomberg that it goals to avoid observatories and can share its satellite tv for pc positions with scientists. Those who examine the night time skies have already had issues with visible air pollution from the more and more crowded low-orbit melee of Starlink and different prolific satellite tv for pc initiatives. 

These harms wouldn’t cease in area, after all. Light air pollution messes with the day-night cycle that has regulated Earthly creatures for billions of years. And from our planet, these 1000’s of extra-reflective satellites may resemble quickly touring stars—so migratory birds and different animals, who look to the celebrities for navigation, may get misplaced.

It’s additionally potential that the various mirrors concerned will not be sufficient. The deliberate constellation of some thousand satellites may solely supply a couple of minutes of sunshine in a given spot. The firm would want 1000’s extra to stretch that to an hour, astronomers Michael J. I. Brown and Matthew Kenworthy noted for The Conversation. 

“The cost that this incurs not only on astronomy, but on the entire civilization—plus the ecological impacts—are, in my personal view, not worth the effort,” Eggl said to Gizmodo. Perhaps this proposal is simply the newest reflection of humanity’s lengthy quest to bend the foundations of the cosmos.

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Lead picture: Jacob W. Frank / Wikimedia Commons

• Molly Glick

  Posted on October 23, 2025

  Molly Glick is the publication editor of Nautilus.