It's becoming increasingly clear to me that Reflect Orbital's fucking stupid giant mirror satellite, with absolutely NOTHING useful to offer, which will cause countless safety issues, ecological disasters, and destroy the night sky, is going to launch.
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It's becoming increasingly clear to me that Reflect Orbital's fucking stupid giant mirror satellite, with absolutely NOTHING useful to offer, which will cause countless safety issues, ecological disasters, and destroy the night sky, is going to launch.
A bunch of astronomers and I have sent out a fact sheet about them to a bunch of journalists, but very few are going to write about this. So, let me try posting it all here.
Here's what I know about Reflect Orbital and all the downsides:
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Reflect Orbital (RO) https://www.reflectorbital.com/ wants customers to pay them to reflect beams of sunlight down from
orbit. This is called “sunlight as a service.”Their initial plan is for each beam to be several times as bright as the full moon and at least 5 km in diameter on the ground.
Due to the high speed needed to orbit Earth, each satellite will shine on one point for only
a few minutes at most (Reflect Orbital says 4 minutes https://thetundradrums.com/reflect-orbital-order-sunlight/) -
If the mirrors cannot be stowed between pointings every 4 minutes, they will sweep across the ground as they move between one target and the next.
At their proposed size, a single RO satellite is orders-of-magnitude too faint to power a solar panel on the ground, thus many would be required to power solar panels. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkjyeI0ykGM
RO has applied to the FCC for their first satellite launch in mid-2026, stating they plan to launch thousands of these satellites https://orbitaltoday.com/2025/07/31/startup-plans-to-beam-sunlight-to-earth-using-space-mirrors/
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The costs to safety and human health:
Although the ground illumination from the first satellite will be much fainter than the Sun’s, looking at the satellite with binoculars or a telescope could actually damage your eyes, similar to looking at a partial solar eclipse. https://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2000JRASC..94..237L
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Beams of light sweeping across the sky at night can cause problems for pilots and drivers. It has the potential to be a substantial distraction, and risks disrupting night vision, particularly with multiple beams. This could be risky around airports and could lead to accidents, similar to laser strikes on aircraft. https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/laser-strikes-aircraft-continue-be-dangerously-high
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Having thousands of RO satellites in orbit would lead to frequent bright flashes all over the sky for any observer on the ground. Even millisecond flashes of light at night have been shown to disrupt human circadian rhythms. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0022078
Exposure to artificial light at night is linked to increased risks of some types of cancer. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5454613/
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The costs to astronomy:
Have you noticed how bright the sky is the last few nights with the very bright nearly-full moon? Now imagine a point source 4x brighter, and moving across the sky. That's what they want to do
Astronomy requires dark skies to see faint celestial objects. Due to scattering of light along the beam, anytime an RO satellite is above the horizon, it would disrupt any
ground-based optical astronomy telescopes in the area. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/smallsat/2025/all2025/98/ -
Similar to astronomical observing with a full moon in the sky, it would restrict observations to only the very brightest handful of stars and planets. This would cause the vast majority of astronomy research to be impossible while one or more of these satellites is above the horizon.
Directly shining the beam onto a large telescope (anywhere within 5km of a large telescope facility) could damage sensitive research telescope camera equipment, which are calibrated to study faint celestial objects
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The costs to ecology:
These are too numerous to even try to list.
All life on Earth – including humans, migrating birds, pollinating insects, plankton in the oceans – depends on the natural day-night cycle of light and darkness. Many hundreds of scientific studies document the importance to ecosystems and agricultural crops of protecting that natural cycle. Bird migrations, pollination, plant growth, and animal behaviors could all be disrupted by reflected sunlight from orbit.
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The costs to orbital safety:
“Sunlight as a service” requires huge mirrors in orbit, which would increase the likelihood of collisions between satellites.
Loss of control could lead to tumbling, causing erratic, bright flashes in the sky.
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Large reflector cross-sections also mean a much higher collision risk from micrometeorites and non-trackable orbital debris. Using typical rates https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S027311772030644X at 625km altitude (the orbit RO proposes to use), such reflectors could expect hundreds of micrometeorite and debris impacts each year, quickly degrading the reflector and creating more diffuse and larger beams.
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There are already solutions right here on Earth to many of the problems “sunlight as a service” purports to solve. This approach is simply a reckless and inefficient use of Earth orbit, a precious and finite resource.
This list of facts was developed by me and a bunch of very concerned astronomers. If you're a journalist interested in writing a news article about this, please look up my university email and contact me, and I'll be happy to chat.
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What can you do? The FCC never opened up a comment period on RO's filing for launch, so there's no official way to protest. They may open it up later? Absolutely no info on that.
DarkSky International is working on a petition to be delivered to RO's misguided investors, I will share that as soon as its public.
Most important: tell people about all the downsides of "sunlight as a service." The world needs to know how incredibly bad this idea is.
Batteries! We need batteries, not space mirrors.
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G gustavinobevilacqua@mastodon.cisti.org shared this topic
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This article by two astronomers details many of the points I just talked about and more ways that Reflect Orbital's plan will never be feasible, just detrimental: now in The Conversation Australia, perfect timing: https://theconversation.com/a-us-startup-plans-to-deliver-sunlight-on-demand-after-dark-can-it-work-and-would-we-want-it-to-264323
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also isn't this equivalent to letting a private corporation have a solar powered energy weapon that can be used against any target.on the planet? Didn't Heinlein warn us about something similar in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress when he said "don't put your prisoners at the top of the gravity well armed with a kinetic weapon powered by the sun and an entire moon full of ammunition?"
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Adding to this Reflect Orbital thread: @startswithabang wrote a thorough analysis of all the ways that Reflect Orbital is a terrible idea. Have a read! https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/true-cost-solar-power-night-reflect-orbital/
