Companies want to plaster the night sky with satellite ads.

Imagine that you have come out on a clear fall evening. Ah, the beautiful night sky! The fear of the cosmos! As we are very small in this vast universe, tiny points on this pale blue point, lucky to exist in this geological moment where the Earth is conducive to life. Really, the sky gives us the gift of perspective – wait, does the Pepsi Logo?

This could be at least from 2021. Earlier this month, the Russian StartRocket company confirmed to Futurism that it was working on launching satellite commercials intended for viewing in the night sky. The company said its first customer was PepsiCo. A representative from PepsiCo then confirmed to Gizmodo that the company had partnered with StartRocket for an "exploratory test" promoting an energy drink, but that it did not plan to continue to advertise in the space. It's unclear if StartRocket can have more clients lined up.

In a video detailing his vision, StartRocket's ads are born behind the Golden Gate Bridge, the Eiffel Tower, a Bali temple, the London Tower Bridge and Arctic icebergs, competing with the northern lights. (The StartRocket website describes a dystopia that I can not capture with words.) The ads would be projected by a constellation of satellites orbiting about 280 miles above the Earth, each equipped with light-reflecting Mylar sails. .

Since the launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957, satellites have been an essentially invisible part of our daily lives, allowing us to make phone calls, monitor time and map our locations. We can sometimes catch them in the night sky, but they are hard to spot, even if you are looking for them. Satellites like the Orbital Display of StartRocket are meant to watch, and as satellites become easier to launch, our sky could become the biggest screen of all.

StartRocket is not alone in the for-profit entertainment satellite game. ALE is the Japanese start-up behind Sky Canvas, a project to launch a series of satellites to project shooting stars on demand – "a whole new level of entertainment," boasts of its site Web. His first show will take place over Hiroshima in the spring of 2020.

Then there is the American company Elysium Space, which propels the artificial stars to a higher level: it presents a show made with the ashes of your loved ones. The company launches a satellite filled with cremated remains, which gravitates around the Earth for a few years, while his family and friends can follow his journey through an application. When the satellite falls into orbit and is consumed in the atmosphere, here is a shooting star. (The company also offers an option to deposit your leftovers on the moon, which seems like a cold and lonely place to spend eternity, but OK.) Nevertheless, this latest show will not necessarily be visible to your loved ones. It is unclear whether Elysium Space warns them of the re-entry of the satellite (we contacted the company and will update this answer with their response), and even if that happened, the festivities could unfold on the other side. side of the planet, or during the day.

And why stop at shooting stars? A Chinese company is trying to make a whole false moon. In October, Chengdu Aerospace Science and Technology, a microelectronics research system company, announced at a conference its intention to launch an "artificial moon" satellite eight times brighter than the moon. The satellite would remain dragged on the Chengdu city, making the street lamps obsolete. All this has not been made public, but the Association says it will be launched in 2020.

Other spectacular satellites are destined to be appreciated as space art. In January, a satellite containing a sculpture called Orbital Reflector clung to a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. (Other satellites included a satellite of Elysium Space and another containing a 24-carat gold pot with a bust of Robert Henry Lawrence Jr., the first American black astronaut, inside.) Orbital reflector, which do not resembling a giant space phallus, was designed by the artist Trevor Paglen and was launched in partnership with the Nevada Museum of Art. The underlying idea is to "turn" the space into "place", "says the project website. "This makes the invisible visible, thus reviving our imagination and fueling our potential for the future."

The Humanity Star, a 3-meter-wide mirrored geodesic sphere launched last year by the American start-up Rocket Lab, has an explanation similar to the wavy hand. According to the company, the giant disco ball of space has been "designed to be a temporary symbol in the night sky that encourages everyone to look in the air, to think about the place of the night. humanity in the universe and think about how we can work together as a single species to meet the challenges. in front of us all. "

Some of these projects may not start at all, literally or metaphorically.

It's funny that Rocket Lab mentions problem solving, since these visible satellite projects have created new problems, both in space and here on Earth. For example, Humanity Star has raised concerns among dark-sky activists who claimed to be the brightest object in the night sky. Astronomers also feared that a new bright object in the sky would harm their work. Much to the relief of its critics, the Humanity Star did not think as much as originally planned and fell into orbit after just two months. (The project was initially expected to last nine months.)

But other bright sky projects, such as the Chengdu artificial moon, may be disruptive. Scientists studying light pollution have found evidence that artificial light disturbs the natural biological processes of insects, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals (like humans!) And even plants. Anything that prevents the use of streetlights seems to be just as embarrassing, if not more so, for the natural world.

The influx of satellites for artistic or commercial purposes also poses a logistical problem for and international authorities, who must keep an eye on what is happening in our skies. Many of these new projects, including the Orbital Display, Orbital Reflector and Elysium Space commercials, are tiny satellites called CubeSats, 10-centimeter cubes weighing up to 20 pounds. They are becoming more and more popular from year to year – 75 launched in 2014, more than 200 in 2017 and more than 500 planned for this year – and if we want to communicate with these satellites or follow their movement from Earth, everyone needs their own radio frequency. A finite number of frequencies are available and they are managed by an American agency.

There are also satellite tracking systems. The one managed by the United States has prevented fans from monitoring Orbital Reflector. In mid-January, six weeks after the launch of the satellite, Paglen and the Nevada Museum of Art wrote in a statement saying that the US Air Force division had still not assigned a tracking number to the satellite, which meant that it was impossible for him to unroll the sculpture portion of the satellite. (I contacted the museum's vice president of communications to ask him if there were any updates, but it was answered that there were some not yet.) This problem will persist, write the authors of a 2018 space policy document, "especially because [these small satellites] will remain in orbit for a limited period of time "and may not be properly recorded in national registers," particularly in States that do not have appropriate regulatory and administrative provisions for this purpose. "

Certainly, some of these projects may not start at all, either literally or figuratively. Technically, StartRocket could launch its satellites – there are no specific rules prohibiting commercials in space – but there is no guarantee that they will work as intended. Small satellites can quickly fall into orbit, as the short Humanity Star mandate has shown. They do not have boosters that allow larger satellites to readjust. Keeping a large number of satellites in a position to reflect sunlight during ad serving could be a major challenge. Some therefore doubt the feasibility of the StartRocket advertising campaign. Likewise, the experts are skeptical. The artificial moon of Chengdu could aim the light with enough precision to focus only on one city.

Even if these satellites go out quickly, their launch only adds to the growing problem of space wastes. The European Space Agency estimates that there is more than 128 million debris flowing in space, and that number is expected to increase dramatically as we continue to throw shit into space. And while the probability of a collision is relatively small, each small satellite is potentially a dangerous projectile. In 2016, a space fragment of the size of a tenth damaged the solar panel of the European satellite radar Sentinel-1A. We should theoretically be able to track every 10 cm CubeSat launched, but in the case of an accident, it could cause a lot of damage to useful infrastructure, such as a communications or research satellite.

It will probably be years before technology has matured enough for space ads and gadgets to become the norm, and it is hoped that space law experts could prepare before to ban the use of the sky. as a billboard. Until then, let us rejoice that Pepsi commercials and zany art installations are relegated to Earth.

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