A Swarm of Flashing Satellites

Imagine this: you’ve just fled from the city to your nearest national park to gaze deeply into the infinite abyss of space and contemplate how your own existence fits into the curtain of the universe. Then, out of the corner of your eye, you see bright white letters spelling “KFC” spring across the horizon in a long arch. A few minutes later, it’s gone.That’s the idea behind Orbital Display, a Russian startup’s effort to bring billboard advertisements to low-Earth orbit using a grid of tissue box-sized satellites called CubeSats . Orbiting approximately 280 miles above ground, these tiny satellites will unfurl Mylar sails some 30 feet in diameter to catch and reflect sunlight, creating a pixelated matrix. The company, StartRocket, has proposed using this tech to display a knockoff of the Coca-Cola logo and other brand emblems, as well as allow governments to flash urgent notifications during emergencies.Vladilen Sitnikov, StartRocket’s CEO, describes himself as an advertising guy with a “crazy idea.” He approached SkolTech, a private university in Moscow, to figure out the technical details, contracting a team of engineers to develop a prototype. Their first test launch could happen this summer, with a full execution in 2021. That is, if the company can find the money.“It’s human nature to advertise everything … Brands [are] a beautiful part of humankind,” Sitnikov says in a video call. He compares his efforts to Elon Musk and SpaceX, who last year launched a Tesla into space, which many considered an advertisement . Sitnikov also compared Orbital Display to banner-towing airplanes.But the idea, unsurprisingly, attracts negative reactions from astronomers and other dark-sky advocates who fear adding more light pollution to the heavens would cause significant problems. However, those I spoke with unanimously felt the project, or something similar, is inevitable. The wait before LED lights and advertisements fill up the night sky may not be long.Many satellites are already reflective, bouncing flares of light back to Earth that are visible for a few seconds. The brightest are Iridium , a constellation of 66 telecommunication satellites tossed into orbit in the ‘90s. If launched, the Orbital Display will be as bright as these — around -8 magnitude. (For reference, the Full Moon is about -13 and the Sun is about -27.)Like most CubeSats, the billboard will have planned obsolescence and won’t last more than a year, the company says. The Orbital Display will only be viewable in evening and morning twilight, when the cubes catch sunlight while the observer is in darkness, according to Patrick Seitzer, an astronomy professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.“You’ll never see them at midnight, for example,” he says in an email. “Depending on the orbit chosen, they might be visible for a few days, and then not visible for a week or more.”“Launching art projects like this with no commercial, scientific, or national security value seems unwise,” adds Seitzer, who has been studying space debris since 2000. “Space is getting increasingly crowded. There are over 20,000 objects with orbits in the official public catalog maintained by the U.S. Air Force. Less than 10 percent of those objects are active satellites — the rest are dead satellites, old rocket bodies and parts of spacecraft.”Astronomer John Barentine agrees this isn’t a bright idea — or actually, bright is the problem. Barentine serves as both director of conservation for the International Dark-Sky Association in Tucson, Arizona, and a member of the American Astronomical Society’s Committee on Light Pollution, Radio Interference and Space Debris. He says these space billboards could qualify as both light pollution and space debris and possibly even disrupt radio signals.“It’s a threat to the ability to do astronomical research from the ground,” he says, noting that SpaceX’s plans to add at least another 7,500 CubeSats into low-Earth orbit will also factor into the problem. “Every one of those moving blips of light in the night sky is something that can interfere with our ability to collect photons from astronomical sources.”But Sitnikov insists his display’s orbit is so short it’s negligible for observing. “It’s just six minutes,” he says. “You can do peeing or making your coffee. So it’s a break for you, it’s like we [are] help[ing] them.”Others see this as adding to the growing health problems caused by light pollution. Harun Mehmedinović, a cinematographer specializing in night sky exposures, emphasizes the effect light pollution has on human mental health, but also the impact it has on plants and animals.“We have a heritage and I think a long-standing relationship with the pristine night sky, which I think is important to us as people,” he says, arguing that without the night sky, humans wouldn’t have developed science or religion. “The two big dominant forces wouldn’t exist without stargazing — they ultimately are rooted in celestial observation.”