[EN/DE] From HAARP to space mirrors: Has the US green-lit the weaponization of sunlight?
Deaf to a chorus of alarms from astronomers, environmentalists, and wildlife experts, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has granted a California start-up permission to experiment bouncing solar rays onto the dark side of Earth, turning night to day for a specific patch of land.
Reflect Orbital’s satellite Earendil-1, orbiting at about 644 kilometers above Earth, will unfurl its mirror to light a 4.8-kilometer-wide circle for minutes at a time.
Equipped with a steerable 18-meter thin-film reflector, the satellite is just the opening salvo of the company’s ambitious vision of “Sunlight on Demand,” where customers could order artificial daylight over multi-kilometer patches for solar farms, disaster relief, or urban illumination.
The company envisions scaling to eventually 50,000 massive mirrors, with the largest of these planned to stretch nearly 55 meters across, reflecting the …More