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FCC approves test of space mirror to light night sky
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/10/climate/fcc-space-mirror.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/10/climate/fcc-space-mirror....
https://www.pcmag.com/news/fcc-approves-reflect-orbitals-giant-mirror-satellite-that-astronomers-hate https://www.pcmag.com/news/fcc-approves-reflect-orbitals-gia...
- assbuttbuttass 4mo agoWe've entered the "bond villain" era of VC startups
- ben_w 4mo agoThat was some time ago. Musk himself tweeted about getting a volcano lair in 2015.
- fragmede 4mo ago2014 was the inflection point. 2013 brought us the term unicorn for companies, and was just long enough after the iphone that we were starting to make sense of it. That's when Elon Musk became a household name thanks to Tesla and SpaceX. Then there was Palantir. Google bought Deepmind in 2014. Google Facebook Amazon and Apple showed founders that software startups could transform the world, and the world leapt at the chance.
- datakan 4mo agoSomeone tried to recruit me back in 2000 for a startup that would sell a box you connect to your computer allowing you to smell things over the internet. I'll let you guess what industry he was targeting.
- ChrisArchitect 4mo agoBlog post: https://www.reflectorbital.com/blog-posts/humanity-has-an-energy-problem https://www.reflectorbital.com/blog-posts/humanity-has-an-en...
- ryankrage77 4mo agoAnnoyingly and predictably, reads like AI slop. You can practically guess the prompt goes something along the lines of 'write a press release explaining why this bad idea is a good idea'.
- blondie9x 4mo agoI think this company intentionally ignored discussing how battery storage has made solar energy a much more effective and viable solution.
- ben_w 4mo agoNever mind that, they're ignoring light bulbs for the S&R stuff. At least, best I can make out over this UI choice: https://imgur.com/gallery/bad-ui-5t0O0SH https://imgur.com/gallery/bad-ui-5t0O0SH (Why, of all the things, would someone use a fire as their example for this? Fire is famously a light source. Also, famously, smoke is a thing that blocks out light from above).
- datakan 4mo agoAnd also cheaper than launching stuff into space. This may have been approved but that's a long ways off from actual viability.
- Robotbeat 4mo agoLaunching a gossamer thin mirror in space is not very expensive. Broad strokes claiming anything launched to space is going to be a more expensive solution has to level with the fact that GPS and quite a lot of telecommunications and Earth observation seem to have incredible leverage if launched to space instead of just using ground based solutions.
- physicalecon 4mo ago[dead]
- ben_w 4mo agoThey seem to be talking about each satellite managing the luminosity of the full moon over a few square kilometres, and getting a few tens of thousands of them. Even if you ignoring how much drag these must have, and hence how much electrical power you'd need for an ion drive just to keep them up, each spot being a few km across (and only getting light while the satellite is over your horizon) is just not compelling. Given most people don't have any reason to illuminate several square kilometres at once, for realistic scenarios it will take a lot of satellites before you beat the cheap battery-powered floodlights in my local Aldi or Kaufland, and the batteries in those lasts a lot longer than the 10-15 or so minutes each of the satellites will be over the horizon, and reflectors like these can only supply sunlight close to sunset otherwise the earth blocks the sun from them. In the list of things which, if you could make them at all useful, would also be relatively easy to redesign as weapons.
- b112 4mo agoWith global warming, trillions upon trillions of acres of immensely fertile bogland, in Northern Canada is thawing. The problem is, global warming doesn't affect daylight. 4 hours of "the sun barely makes it over the horizon" means no crops, no matter if the temp is above 0C in September. Obviously this satellite isn't viable, but all things start small. Large tracts of land could be illuminated. But of course, I question the logic of redirecting more sunlight, especially such large amounts, onto a world already warming uncontrollably. Still, it could be useful for the polar caps on Mars? These seem like unlikely things though.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- ben_w 4mo agoMars… needs something rather bigger. I don't know what the most cost-effective solution would be, but Mars gets about half the per-area sunlight as Earth so it would need a reflector about the size of Mars to get the same overall insolation. My guess is it's probably easier to make a bunch of greenhouses on the surface? But the scale is so huge that which is best will be affected by technology invented after you start.
- formvoltron 4mo agothis is the sort of startup we get when memes rule the investing landscape.
- Avicebron 4mo ago“The regular early morning yell of horror was the sound of Arthur Dent waking up and suddenly remembering where he was" - Douglas Adams
- ChrisArchitect 4mo agonon-paywall: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/10/climate/fcc-space-mirror.html?unlocked_article_code=1.w1A.2qMi.NRAAfc1VEfuZ&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/10/climate/fcc-space-mirror....
- andwur 4mo agoHow are the economics of this idea meant to be viable? The proposed business model is to park hundreds of millions to billion dollars of satellites in orbit, plus the costs to maintain and operate them, to meet the goal of selective area illumination and solar power. Ignoring the issue of cloud cover, which still seems to be an impediment. That's going to need to directly compete with terrestrial energy storage technology, e.g. batteries, and... general lighting. Both of which are well established, diversified and reliable market segments with vastly cheaper MWh costs compared to beaming a small amount of light down using a satellite. This strikes me as another hand-waved scifi/fantasy inspired investment, where everyone is so caught up in proving they can achieve this (spoiler: this is obviously possible) that no one has stopped to ask does that achievement lead to a real benefit outside of VC wealth transference?
- deadbabe 4mo agoThe revenue potential is huge. Think of public events where people might want to illuminate the area as daylight for several hours. Galas, sports, concerts, parties, etc.. They will all pay top dollar and they have the funds. Could get sponsors, "Today's sunlight brought to you by NordVPN"
- Chingers 4mo agoFrankly I don't see this happening before the year of the Depend Adult Undergarment
- dizhn 4mo agoI've read enough of it to get the reference.
- turtleyacht 4mo agoSame. By that point, I realized if that was one thing I got, I must have missed even more.
- moralestapia 4mo ago
- bix6 4mo ago> Eärendil-1 Can everyone just stop with all the LOTR references already why the fuck is this such a thing.
- Robotbeat 4mo agoNah. Should have been named after the Two Trees of Valinor, Telperion and Laurelin.
- oersted 4mo agoI initially quite liked it, particularly when the references are a bit more obscure, generally from classic scifi/fantasy. You can end with a nice sounding name and a small wink to fellow nerds. But it is such a shame that it has started to become the brand of dark-side (militaristic/authoritarian) Silicon Valley: Palantir, Anduril, this… Tolkien would be so very sad. PS: Palantir is at least rather fitting and honest, it’s literally an evil crystal ball (at least the one shown in the movies).
- gcr 4mo agoWonder what would happen if a hacker focused all ten thousand of them on a single area for an hour or two. Sounds like a really energy-efficient way to demolish a city. X Wing: Wedge’s Gamble (1996) by Michael Stackpole shows the rebel alliance using similar tricks during the battle of Coruscant.
- blooalien 4mo ago> "Wonder what would happen if a hacker focused all ten thousand of them on a single area for an hour or two. Sounds like a really energy-efficient way to demolish a city." I'm far more concerned about the people who own/build stuff like this using it as you suggest (or any of the government pets that they own) than I am about "hackers" doin' such things (although, you're entirely right to have that concern as well, because there's obviously those type of folks out there doin' bad things even with the technology we have already).
- aaron695 4mo ago[dead]
- reader9274 4mo agoFirst, they don't exist and 10k of them will never exist. Second, nothing would happen, the power will be minuscule and last for a very short time focused on such a small patch. see: https://youtu.be/lkjyeI0ykGM https://youtu.be/lkjyeI0ykGM
- dheera 4mo agoI don't think 50000 60-ft mirrors at the height they intend to fly would cause that to happen. Not enough light gathering power. 50000 60-ft mirrors is about the same area as a single mirror 2.5 miles across. So the area of the mirrors is about the area of a city. You gather as much light as the city itself in regular daytime. If you focused all of that perfectly efficiently onto a city, that city would just look like daytime.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- dofm 4mo agoThe only non-marginal application for this is military, surely. It sounds too coarse-grade in terms of its area to be anything other than disruptive socially and ecologically. Sporting and cultural events? Not really (extending the hours of sunlight over a city does have marginal value for a major celebratory event I suppose, but there just aren't that many of these). Farming? Don't plants need night too? Does harvesting need the sun anymore? But being able to illuminate a war zone with spontaneous sunlight you can switch off at will, that is a weapon, not least because if you are the only one with the power, your opponents will have to act knowing they may not have the cover of night. It's not as dangerous as allowing Elon Musk to launch so many more satellites that he ends up with de facto control over access to earth orbit, but it's pretty dangerous.
- ben_w 4mo ago> The only non-marginal application for this is military, surely. I think so, but even then it's a heck of a lot of work to make it useful for that. > Farming? Don't plants need night too? Does harvesting need the sun anymore? Mostly limited by other things, hence why there's only limited farming in the Sahara, relatively little phytoplankton in the North Atlantic Gyre. > But being able to illuminate a war zone with spontaneous sunlight you can switch off at will, that is a weapon, not least because if you are the only one with the power, your opponents will have to act knowing they may not have the cover of night. Even then, nah. Militaries have had night vision for ages. We can make a wall-penetrating radar work as heartbeat/breathing sensor out of kit fairly close to (but not close enough to be a software patch from) a WiFi base station.
- dofm 4mo agoI guess it has policing applications, marginally. But most police forces just use helicopters and night vision, and ultimately rely on the disruptive sound of the helicopter to bring people out to look for whoever they are chasing; the noise of a helicopter makes people vigilant. I just don't really get it.
- cindyllm 4mo ago
- hunmernop 4mo agoChinese outcry? There’s a lot of that in social media, their bot warriors are everywhere. Same with AI and anything that gives the USA competitive edge.
- hunmernop 4mo agoApparently there’s a ton here on ycombinator judging by the downvotes
- swasheck 4mo agosomebody watched die another day (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Another_Day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Another_Day) and thought, “hmm. great idea.”
- blooalien 4mo agoIt's actually more'n a little bit scary how much of modern "politics" seems as if it could be driven by having watched any of a number of movies and thinking "We should do that!" When I hear people talk about politicians bein' like spoiled brat children in adult bodies, I tend to think that sounds like exactly the type of mentality that could see something all messed up and scary in a movie and want to try to do it in the real world. What makes it even more scary in my mind is that we've allowed those type of people to gather entirely too much money and power such that they have the option available to them to seriously consider trying such horrible ideas.
- seydor 4mo agoDon't we have the moon for that?
- Cthulhu_ 4mo agoYes but what if you could have a second moon, on-demand?
- 9cb14c1ec0 4mo agoMAAS
- DamonHD 4mo agoObvs "MaaS" capitalisation for the full stock valuation. Obvs(2) a variant of this service has traditionally been provided for free by drunken teens. They might prove to be better and more thoughtful custodians of investment funds.
- seydor 4mo agonothing beats free
- goda90 4mo agoSo we've got this problem of the atmosphere trapping too much heat from solar radiation hitting the surface and the plan is to increase the amount of solar radiation hitting the surface?
- brynnbee 4mo agoIt's fine just setup mirrors on the ground to bounce the light back to the satellite! (/s)
- Cthulhu_ 4mo agoYou jest but if one sattelite can be used to focus light onto the earth, it can also be used to focus it away from it, evening it out.
- attila-lendvai 4mo agoit'll be great for the GDP, too!
- kadoban 4mo agoIt could only ever increase by the surface area of the satellite lens things. It'll be a rounding error compared to the surface area of Earth (or compared to the effect of greenhouse gasses over the time period you're setting up these things).
- hoppp 4mo agoExactly. We don't have enough energy apparently and need more warming.
- verzali 4mo agoYou could turn the mirrors around and reflect sunlight away from the planet. That might be useful. Imagine using it during a heatwave.
- garbagewoman 4mo agoTrue, deny sunlight to whomever, also sounds dystopian
- jackyinger 4mo agoHow is this under the FCC’s authority?
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- petcat 4mo ago> The FCC said that the “risks of harm raised on the record regarding Reflect Orbital’s solar reflector are unrelated to the Commission’s role in authorizing use of radiofrequency spectrum.” The FCC only approved that the satellite would not interfere with other radio communications, not the ultimate purpose. They said themselves they don't have authority for that.
- tadfisher 4mo agoIt should be under the EPA's authority. This has the potential to disrupt animal behavior within the illuminated area if it truly is as bright as a full moon.
- icase 4mo agoi give you: the industrial revolution and its consequences
- burnt-resistor 4mo agoAhem. Ladies and Gentlemen. I have placed in orbit a giant mirror that will reflect 40% of the Sun's rays. Thus cooling Earth. Observe.
- ck2 4mo agoat some point some rogue country is going to do a starfish-prime event create an artificial LEO radiation belt on purpose and wipe out 99% of satellites part of me is oddly rooting for it these days make Musk a millionaire again
- itsmeagainhere 4mo agoYou are the rogue country. (And you actually know that, but since it benefits you, or at least so you are told, you are "not seeing" that.)
- dkersten 4mo agoFinally, we can replace daylight saving time by just making more daylight instead
- downrightmike 4mo agoWe've tried to do this at ground level to make molten salt power and all it did was fry birds and the project is shut down.
- effed3 4mo agoEarth orbits, low orbits above all, are a finite resource, and suffer pollution as every environment, with all this kind of satellites growing in number to millions, things can go badly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome Apart tecnical and scientific reasons (no need to use thousand or million of sats), apart big speculations (suspect is the main reason), many problems can be resolved in others ways.
- effed3 4mo agoputting mirrors in orbit to have (little) more light is like buiding city underwater to have more cool. ops this last will be way less stupid in the future... To downvote a different opinion without arguing is same kind of attitude: stay fresh.
- globular-toast 4mo agoThis is genuinely the stuff of nightmares. Imagine not even being able to have night time any more.
- peeters 4mo agoThe fact that they're spelling this Earendil, not Earendel, makes me think this is a direct reference to Tolkien's work. It's pretty weird for dystopian industrial initiatives to be named after characters in a work whose most unambiguous message was that rampant industrialization was ruining the world.
- consp 4mo agoSounds like a morning star reference (via some obscure Christian texts) which I will draw further towards Lucifer via Latin. Do with this idea as you please.
- peeters 4mo agoTolkien's Earendil was definitely a reference to the morning star, but outside his legendarium I don't know of anyone spelling it "dil" instead of "del". If it was supposed to be a non-Tolkien reference I would've expected them to spell it accordingly.
- ElijahLynn 4mo ago> There are many problems with this proposal, including impacts these satellites will have on human health and safety, as well as on astronomy and the low-Earth environment. > Flashes during mirror repointing could disrupt pilots and drivers. The light could also disrupt circadian rhythms of plants, animals and humans
- blaze33 4mo agoOne question I have is about apparent magnitude: given the satellite's small size (relative to the apparent size of the moon) it would have to be very bright to match the luminosity of the full moon on the surface. In this article: https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/new-kind-of-satellite-could-damage-eyes/ https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/new-kind-of-satel... > calculated that the Reflect Orbital spacecraft would appear as points of light with a magnitude of -15 [...] might damage the eye. -15 seems ~10 times brighter than the moon (-12,6) if I got the formula right so it would indeed be very bright. Reminds me of all the led lighting we have now: one evening on a random street I watched the cars, bicycles, shops, street lamps: all leds, yes a bit brighter and colder than the old bulbs I know, buuut the light sources being very small dots (with no diffuser), it feels very harsh to the eye, at least to me. Anyway, even if it proves useful for something, it would join the long list of innovations doing one thing at the expense of everyone else (externality == light pollution in this case).
- jstummbillig 4mo ago> Anyway, even if it proves useful for something, it would join the long list of innovations doing one thing at the expense of everyone else (externality == light pollution in this case). That's a strange reading. What would keep the benefits from cheaper electricity from diffusing to roughly everyone, as they usually do?
- blaze33 4mo agoI guess you can have both positive and negative externalities. I went back to re-read reflectorbital.com, indeed if you're only lighting a solar farm in the middle of nowhere maybe the light pollution is not so bad outside of the targeted zone. Still fells like a complicated solution to me. Imo we need more storage innovation and investment, a lot more. We know we'll have more and more intermittent renewables electricity production, we just have to store it.
- jstummbillig 4mo agoOh, absolutely. The space mirror idea might be a net terrible idea; more panels and better batteries could simply be it. I just don't see why, if this turns out to work, the benefits would not diffuse (principally because I don't see a line of previous innovations where this was not the case, electricity being a prime example of an extremely potent and well diffused commodity).
- giantg2 4mo agoThis is a terrible idea. Light cycles affect many natural functions in the world. We already see some of this with light pollution. This idea is basically light pollution on an industrial scale.
- sensanaty 4mo agoWhat the fuck are we doing as a species?
- kklisura 4mo agoI do wonder if capital is so cheap or wealth inequality is actually much bigger problem then we thought so that excess capital ends up in ideas like this.
- deadonarrival 4mo agoDefinitely the latter
- Pay08 4mo agoDefinitely the former.
- rightbyte 4mo agoI don't think those are exclusive.
- kklisura 4mo agoNot a finance guy or economist, but in my head: capital being cheap still means investors want return on their capital and that puts some upper limit/threshold on the risk that they are willing to take vs Wealthy people having so much excess capital that they are deploying it at any project with zero regard for return, risk, feasibility or reality of it.
- mike_hock 4mo ago> SpaceX filed with the FCC for one million more satellites Sure, that's only gonna cost a couple quadrillion dollars or so.
- yumraj 4mo agoRussians had conducted similar experiments, Znamya, in the 1990s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Znamya_%28satellite%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Znamya_%28satellite%29
- ianeff 4mo agoWhen Mister Burns did this, people got _pissed_.
- rasz 4mo agorussians already tried in the nineties https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Znamya_(satellite) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Znamya_(satellite)
- ddahlen 4mo agoStrictly from an energy conservation argument this doesnt make a whole lot of sense to me. Just some back of the envelope math if they take their current mirror size, make 50k of them and overlap all of the output on the same 3 mile spot (the spot size they claim they will get on a single mirror). With an ideal reflector it is still less than mid-day daylight. Thats 50k satellites to give you direct sun over one 3 mile spot. I suppose to make this feasible they would have to up the size of the mirrors. Unless this is somehow dirt cheap I can't imagine farmers or solar operators buying this.
- verzali 4mo agoBaffling that the FCC is the agency to approve such a thing.
- spl757 4mo agoIn the US, people are going to shoot at it with guns. Bullets that go straight up? Probably not lethal when it falls back to the ground, tumbling and lacking ballistic energy, but bullets that follows a ballistic trajectory are going to hit with force. What could posssibly go wrong?