What if the sun never set? The California-based startup Reflect Orbital aims to set that possibility in motion by launching thousands of mirrors into space. The company has identified the mirrors as a way of harnessing renewable energy. Detractors are worried about the environmental consequences.
Daylight savings
The company is “trying to build something that could replace fossil fuels and really power everything,” Ben Nowack, Reflect Orbital’s chief executive, said in an interview with The New York Times. The plan is to deliver a “spot of sunlight on demand with a constellation of in-space mirrors,” said Reflect Orbital’s website. The space-mirror constellation would intercept the “solar energy that misses us” and enable humanity to employ it.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is considering whether to permit Reflect Orbital to launch the mirror satellite. If the FCC allows it, the company would send up a prototype satellite “equipped with a 60-foot mirror,” said Futurism. Ultimately, Reflect Orbital’s goal is to deploy 50,000 mirror satellites in orbit around the Earth by 2035, a sum more than “five times the size of the largest satellite constellation in the world.” These satellites would be used to power solar panels, even during non-peak sun hours, as well as to illuminate disaster zones and expand daytime hours.
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Manipulating sunlight has raised concerns among experts about the effect of light pollution on the environment and biodiversity. “The beam reflected by these satellites is very intense, four times brighter than the full moon, and they will be flying multiple satellites in a formation,” John Barentine, an astronomer at the Silverado Hills Observatory and consultant at Dark Sky Consulting, told Space.com (a sister site of The Week). The brightness will “have an effect on wildlife in the directly illuminated area but also, through atmospheric scattering, on the surrounding areas.”
Light complications
The mirrors “could distract airplane pilots, mess up astronomical observations and interfere with circadian rhythms,” which would ultimately impact humans, animals and plants’ ability to “know when to wake and sleep, when to bloom, when to migrate and so forth,” said the Times. To address these concerns, the light from the mirrors is supposed to be “contained within the spot,” able to be “turned off quickly and at any time so that none of it reaches the Earth” and “intentionally avoid sensitive areas like research observatories or protected habitats,” said Reflect Orbital’s website.
Despite the company’s claims, many are skeptical. “Light is inevitably scattered by particles of air, and glow from the beam could brighten the night sky miles farther away, an effect that is evident with the street lighting of even small towns,” said the Times. In addition, “brightness estimates suggest that thousands of these satellites could be visible to the naked eye,” even “potentially outnumbering the stars visible in the night sky,” said The Times.
Such environmental implications may not play a role in the FCC’s decision. Activities in space, per the agency, are “not subject to environmental review,” said the Times. Instead, the FCC “checks to ensure that a spacecraft’s radio communications do not create interference problems for others and that the spacecraft will be safely disposed of at the end of its operational lifetime.” The night sky is a “valued part of human heritage,” Robert Massey, the deputy executive director of the Royal Astronomical Society, said to The Times. Space mirrors “would utterly destroy this and permanently scar the natural landscape. We hope the FCC wholeheartedly rejects the plans.”
