TOKYO — The Federal Communications Commission has given its approval for a satellite that will test the ability to reflect sunlight into nighttime regions, a project sharply criticized by astronomers and environmentalists.
The FCC on July 9 formally authorized the launch of Eärendil-1, a satellite developed by Reflect Orbital that will deploy a thin-film reflector 18 meters on a side in low Earth orbit, reflecting sunlight to the ground.
The 142-kilogram spacecraft is scheduled to launch later this year into an orbit 600 to 650 kilometers in altitude, where it will deploy the reflector. The company plans to use the spacecraft to test its ability to direct reflected sunlight to specific areas on Earth for several minutes at a time.
“We’re grateful to the FCC for recognizing the importance of testing novel technologies in space,” Ben Nowack, chief executive of Reflect Orbital, said in a statement. “This license is the first step toward rigorously testing our technology’s efficacy and the safeguards we have developed.”
The company said it has seen strong interest in its technology to provide lighting for activities ranging from construction sites to search-and-rescue efforts. The company also proposes using such satellites to reflect sunlight onto terrestrial solar farms to increase their energy production.
The concept, though, has generated strong criticism from some quarters. Environmentalists have warned that the reflected sunlight from a constellation of such spacecraft — Reflect Orbital has proposed operating thousands of spacecraft — could disrupt the diurnal cycles of plants and animals. Astronomers worry that such spacecraft could interfere with their operations and even be dangerous to instruments mounted on telescopes or to people looking through telescope lenses.
At a June 4 National Academies meeting, Tony Tyson, distinguished research professor at the University of California, Davis, and chief scientist of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, said the Reflect Orbital plans were “even crazier” than the broadband satellite constellations astronomers have worried about for several years.
He said he was concerned that the thin-film reflectors would not be able to precisely direct sunlight, scattering it instead over a wider area. “Imagine the sky full of moons,” he said.
In a July 1 statement, the European Southern Observatory, or ESO, which operates several major telescopes in Chile, said the full constellation of 50,000 satellites that Reflect Orbital has proposed would increase the background sky brightness at its facilities by a factor of three to four, limiting the ability of telescopes to detect faint objects.
Reflect Orbital’s application to the FCC, submitted nearly a year ago, generated nearly 1,900 comments, mostly critical of the potential impacts of the system. SpaceX’s application to operate up to 1 million orbital data center satellites, which astronomers are also worried about, resulted in nearly 1,500 comments.
“The ball is now in the FCC’s court, and we wait to see the determinations they make on both filings,” said Betty Kioko, ESO institutional affairs officer, in the statement. “For optical astronomy, this is an existential threat, and we hope that the regulators will share that view.”
The FCC, in its order, largely concluded that any impacts of Eärendil-1 on astronomy or the environment were outside its jurisdiction.
“We find that concerns about Eärendil-1’s impacts on optical astronomy fall outside our review and authorization of the space station and are not a basis for denial of or additional conditions on Reflect Orbital’s operations,” the FCC stated. It noted the company has committed to collaborating with NASA and the National Science Foundation to protect optical astronomy and to working with the broader astronomical community on its concerns.
The FCC rejected claims that approving Eärendil-1 would not be in the public interest, concluding that “to the contrary, it is in the public interest to make spectrum available to encourage companies to test new and innovative space activities, as it promotes American innovation and the new services and economic growth that come from that innovation.”
The FCC’s authorization for the satellite came a day after environmental and scientific groups formally petitioned the FCC to perform a detailed environmental review, known as a programmatic environmental assessment, for applications of orbital data center constellations.
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