“No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to… fry!” If you’ve ever watched Diamonds Are Forever, Die Another Day, or any of the other James Bond films featuring megalomaniacs with space-based superweapons, you probably assumed giant orbiting mirrors capable of directing sunlight at Earth would remain safely in the realm of Hollywood fantasy.
Apparently, no one told the Federal Communications Commission. In a decision that would make Ernst Stavro Blofeld nod approvingly while stroking his cat, regulators have approved the first step toward a commercial constellation of orbital mirrors designed to beam sunlight onto the Earth’s surface. What could possibly go wrong? -Anthony
Via Spaceweather.com:
Since SpaceX began launching Starlink satellites in 2019, astronomers have grown increasingly concerned. It’s almost impossible now to take a deep-sky image without satellite streaks in the background. The mega-constellation numbers nearly 11,000 functioning satellites, and SpaceX launched another 1,589 during the first half of 2026 alone.
Soon, Starlink may be the least of their worries.
An artist’s concept of sunlight beamed down from orbit. Bats, fireflies, and other creatures of the night could find their darkness interrupted by roving spots of artificial sunlight
Last week, the FCC authorized Reflect Orbital Inc. to launch a huge space mirror named “Eärendil-1.” From an orbit about 625 km high, it will cast a moving, 5-km-wide patch of light onto the Earth about as bright as a full Moon. Later, the company could combine beams from multiple satellites to create much brighter spotlights. Reflect Orbital wants to launch 50,000 more by 2035, selling sunlight-on-demand to solar farms, construction sites and search-and-rescue teams.
If Reflect Orbital’s plan is realized, it could be calamitous not only for astronomy but also for the natural world as a whole. Nocturnal animals and night-blooming plants, tuned by evolution to the rhythm of day and night, would suddenly find their darkness interrupted by moving pools of redirected sunlight. Small favors? Reflect Orbital says the light will not be bright enough to start fires.
The FCC itself acknowledged some of these concerns, but noted in its order that optical astronomy and the environment lie largely outside its jurisdiction. They can only regulate the project’s use of radio signals. For now, no US agency regulates how bright a satellite may shine.
The company’s FCC application attracted more than 1,800 public comments, most of them sharply critical. Nevertheless, the launch of Eärendil-1 is now expected before the end of the year.
It doesn’t make sense! Not even from an economic point of vue. Who would be willing to pay for a somewhat bright satellite during the nicht? It can’t even be considered as a service.
It doesn’t even make sense economically. No one is willing to pay for a somewhat bright satellite during the night. It can’t even be qualified under “services”.
Do they have any clue that by directing more sunlight to Earth’s surface, it is like turning up the brightness of the Sun? The planet will heat and only locally, disrupting weather patterns and warming the night, which is what global warming is in the first place.
Global warming is really just a warming of the average night that raises the overall average.This extends the growing time for plants each day and lengthens the growing season as well.
The assumption global warming means hotter daytimes is simply wrong and infantile, ignoring the physics that determines the radiation given off (given up tp the air also) by objects according their temperature. As this goes up at the rate of temperature increase to the 4th power, there is an effective negative feedback to warming.
Does Elon Musk have a white cat?
not even a hat tip? im miffed;-)
What happens when the errant meteor hits the mirror?
What are the maintenance and repair capabilities being put into place and how much cost is associated with a mission to repair?
This whole concept is beyond stupid much like trying to block sunlight to cool the planet as was proposed not so long ago.
So which do we do? Block the sun or insert more sunlight into the environment?
Or maybe the play is to block sunlight in some places and provide night time sunlight in others?
It all comes down to a basic philosophy. Just because a thing can be done does not mean it should be.
Sunlight is about 400,000 times brighter than the light of a full moon, with both having about the same subtended angle (~0.5 degrees arc) in the sky. So the claim in the above article that the 5 km diameter solar reflector will provide the illumination of a full moon at Earth’s surface speaks to some incredibly poor engineering, or alternatively to admission that the deployed “mirror”cannot be held “planar” and/or will have a very poor reflection coefficient.
Back to the drawing board, as they say.
“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
Jef Goldblum, Jurassic Park
I trust that any nation not consenting to this can sue the private entity into bankruptcy.
When you get married you do not have the right to screw 1 billion women on earth…..
Well, so far no nation on Earth has yet sued SpaceX/Elon Musk/its new public shareholders for deploying the current constellation of about 10,400 orbiting Starlink satellites, which together have a maximum cross-sectional area of at least* 260,000 km^2, four orders of magnitude larger than the 20 km^2 area of a single 5km diameter reflector.
*From Google’s AI bot:
“The maximum cross-sectional area of a Starlink satellite depends on the version. For earlier flat-panel models (v1.0 to v1.5), the maximum cross-section is roughly 25 to 26 m² when the solar panels are fully deployed. For the newer, much larger Starlink V2 Mini satellites, the maximum cross-sectional area can reach up to 52.5 m² for the solar arrays alone.”