ALE

In November each year, the Leonid meteor shower sends bright sparks shooting through the night sky, as space dust from the Tempel-Tuttle comet burns up in the atmosphere. But in 2001, observers on Earth were treated not just to a shower, but a storm – thousands of shooting stars were visible in the biggest show in decades.

Japanese astronomy student Lena Okajima was among those watching that night, and conversations with her friends afterwards sparked an ambitious idea. In September 2011, she founded ALE, a ‘space entertainment’ company that wants to create artificial meteor showers on demand, and sell them to music festivals, theme parks and cities holding special events.


After years of work, the concept is finally ready for testing. On January 17, the company will launch its first satellite into orbit on board the Japanese space agency Jaxa’s Epsilon rocket. The 65kg microsatellite will detach from the rocket at an altitude of 500 kilometres, and the first step will be to bring it slightly closer to Earth. A membrane will open that will increase atmospheric drag on the satellite, taking it slowly down to the target height of 400km.

Once there, the satellite will generate meteors by releasing small particles, about a centimetre in size, that will burn brightly in the atmosphere as they fall towards the ground before disintegrating at about 60km above the surface. “Compared to natural ones, our meteors are more massive and travel through the atmosphere more slowly, which allows them to be observed for a longer time,” says ALE’s Hiroki Kajihara.

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There are two key technologies that will make this project possible. The first is the particle release system, which uses pressurised gas and is accurate to speeds of 3 metres per second, even as the satellite orbits at thousands of kilometres an hour. “To generate a man made meteor at a desired location and time, the meteor particle release parameters must be fine-tuned to a very high degree of accuracy,” says Kajihara. The second is the particles themselves, which are made of undisclosed but allegedly non-toxic materials that interact with the air in different ways to produce a range of colours.

It’s an expensive endeavour – ALE has secured financial backing from angel investors, venture capitalists and Japanese banks. It has not released details of how much it’s going to charge for its services, but the cost of sending up this test satellite alone could exceed $1m, although the company says that each satellite could be used for thousands of separate releases.


Getting the ‘meteors’ into the right place at the right time is also a huge technical challenge. According to Stephen Hobbs, who works on space systems at Cranfield University, randomly releasing the particles could result in a spread of up to 1,000km by the time they get to earth – where an accuracy of 50km will be required to make sure the meteor shower appears in the right place. “Timing will need some careful planning,” he says.

Another potential issue could be the weather. “They will very likely launch before they have a good weather forecast for their target area,” says Hobbs. But by choosing a ‘sun-synchronous’ orbit that follows night around the planet, ALE could get multiple chances to provide the show each day, albeit at a different location each time.

The system has been going through a battery of tests over the last few years, including vibration tests in a vacuum chamber to simulate space. They’ve also released meteor particles in the same chamber to test the angle and velocity of how they are released. This launch and another scheduled for the summer represent the final stages in development before the first artificial meteor shower, which is scheduled to light up the skies above Hiroshima in spring 2020, where it will be visible by six million people spread across 200km.

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There has been growing concern in recent years about the amount of junk and debris in orbit, with fears that shrapnel from old satellites could hamper rocket launches in future. Spewing out unspecified particles that could interfere with sensitive equipment feels slightly irresponsible. ALE has plans for more space entertainment projects in the future – and right now there’s nothing to stop anyone from launching as many satellites, electric cars or art installations into orbit as they want, for whatever reason. However, Hobbs doesn’t think this particular project will be a problem for other space users at the satellite’s planned altitude – around 8km below the International Space Station.


Kajihara says there are a number of safety checks that will take place before each launch to avoid any problems. The satellite will check the position and trajectory of other satellites, and has multiple redundant monitoring systems to make sure the particles are released in the right place and at the right speed.

He is also keen to stress that the mission, which they’ve dubbed the Shooting Star Challenge, is not entirely frivolous. “The upper atmosphere where our meteor showers will burn has few means of observation today, and remains one of the least understood portions of the atmosphere,” he says. By studying how the particles they release move through this zone, ALE hopes to further scientific understanding. “This has potential applications in the safe disposal of space debris, for instance,” says Kajihara.

For Okajima, it’s a huge moment that’s been decades in the making. “The completed satellite was absolutely gorgeous, mounted majestically on the rocket, and when I realised that would soon travel to space, it seemed surreal,” she says. “I hope that our man made meteors will help reveal new discoveries in science, and that they will gather and entertain people under the night sky.”

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