Sunlight at night for 5,000 euros an hour: the business of mirror satellites that banish the darkness

Reflect Orbital’s website and presentation are quite clear: we know it will cause problems for some people, they say quite honestly, but think of the benefits. You don’t need ground-based infrastructure, do you; it’s easy to set up, isn’t it; in agriculture, it extends the growing seasons – perhaps true, but it’s not clear whether that’s desirable; it will be possible to work 24 hours a day, particularly in the construction sector, and some people may well have objections to that. They also promise to leave some areas free for those who still wish to gaze at or study the sky.

This highlights a first, extremely serious problem. The international situation – which nobody seems willing to change at the moment – is incredible: today, I can secure funding to occupy the skies in a quasi-military manner; all I need is a licence from my national authority – in this case, the US – and then anyone can go and floodlight an area of land on the other side of the world, for whatever purpose.

What’s more, a monopoly on space is looming, because there aren’t that many satellites left: orbits are like roads where, if we put too many cars and lorries on them, sooner or later they’ll collide. But in space, the knock-on effects are disastrous, as the fragments of satellites resulting from collisions do not come to a halt as they do on Earth – because there is no friction in space – and become deadly projectiles.

The plans for these constellations – almost all of which are American – do not require a general agreement or the adoption of common rules. With radio frequencies – another limited common resource – it was immediately realised that there would be total chaos if no agreement were reached and an international body were not set up straight away to grant licences for the use of clearly defined frequencies, in accordance with agreed rules. And so, fortunately, the ITU – the International Telecommunication Union – was established.

Space is a tricky area, given that the US national regulatory body, the aforementioned FCC, does not believe it is appropriate to apply regulations already adopted on Earth – such as environmental regulations – to space. As far as the FCC is concerned, the sky is not a natural environment to be treated with care, but is available to whoever takes it.

At first glance, it all may seem very appealing and promising, and it is indeed innovative, but let’s consider the objections that have already been raised: by American astronomers themselves, by airline pilots, by those who study circadian rhythms, the internal biological clock that regulates the body’s functions in cycles of approximately 24 hours and the light and dark cycles of humans, animals and plants. And this is only the beginning. Consider the waste of public money – not only on scientific equipment costing billions, to begin with, but also on remedying the damage to the Earth’s environment, including human health, agriculture and wildlife. Even Roohi Dalal, director of public policy at Reflect Orbital, has admitted as much.

The point is not to demonise this project or others, but to find a common approach to managing the problems that may arise from space technologies, as was done with radio and television frequencies.

It is not the first time, however, that someone has considered reflecting sunlight onto the Earth at night. In 1993, a Russian satellite fitted with a mirror approximately 25 metres in diameter briefly reflected a narrow beam of sunlight onto our planet, as part of an experiment aimed at extending daylight hours in Arctic Siberia. However, the Russians abandoned the project about ten years later, partly due to its cost and complexity, and it was not pursued further.