A Russian company, Avant Space, has taken the first step toward putting advertising infrastructure in the sky. The company said its "first space media satellite" sent into orbit was merely a prototype for a "planned fleet of small, low-cost, laser-equipped satellites designed to emblazon Earth's sky with corporate logos, QR codes and other consumer-culture ephemera," said Scientific American.
This new venture will "prove that space is not just for scientists, not just for the military — it is entertainment, too," Vlad Sitnikov of StartRocket, a Russian firm partnering with Avant Space, said to Scientific American. A study published in the journal Aerospace found that a billboard-like constellation consisting of 50 satellites would cost approximately $65 million and still turn a profit.
The advertisements would reportedly "only be switched on during dawn and dusk and only over major cities, thereby avoiding remote areas where telescopes are typically hosted and the dark hours when most astronomical observations are carried out," said Scientific American. As a result, proponents claim that light pollution would not be an issue. "The cities typically have permanent light pollution and are not considered as locations for observatories, for which the image demonstration can be harmful," said the Aerospace study.
On the other hand, said Scientific American, once in orbit, "these satellites would reflect sunlight particularly strongly during twilight hours, which would still degrade observations of current and forthcoming ground-based telescopes, leading to a loss of discoveries." | 
