The

says its

launched in 2018 is now lost in space.

Museum spokeswoman Amanda Horn says the orbital reflector is still inside the shoebox-sized case in which it was sent up.

It was supposed to inflate into a 100-foot-long balloon after a few months, but Horn says during the government shutdown, there was a lack of communication to keep track of the satellite. After the six-week shutdown, the satellite was no longer functional.

A release from the museum says, "By the time the government was re-opened and the Air Force renewed its attempts to sort out the cloud of satellites, communications from spacecraft had gone silent. At this point, it became clear that tracking Orbital Reflector, either before or after its inflation in space, would no longer be a viable outcome."

The $1.5 million project was privately funded.

Horn says the museum and the balloon artist, Trevor Paglen, consider the project a success, because it started a global conversation about who controls the domain of space.