{"id":223196,"date":"2025-10-10T05:16:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T10:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/radical-plan-to-beam-sunlight-on-demand-at-night-sparks-concerns"},"modified":"2025-10-10T05:16:00","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T10:16:00","slug":"radical-plan-to-beam-sunlight-on-demand-at-night-sparks-concerns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/radical-plan-to-beam-sunlight-on-demand-at-night-sparks-concerns","title":{"rendered":"Radical Plan to Beam \u2018Sunlight on Demand\u2019 at Night Sparks Concerns"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/yDV3v0Xb4ow?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>A proposed constellation of satellites has astronomers very worried. Unlike satellites that reflect sunlight and <a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/thousands-of-satellites-are-polluting-australian-skies-and-threatening-ancient-indigenous-astronomy-practices-173840\">produce light pollution<\/a> as an unfortunate byproduct, the ones by US startup <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reflectorbital.com\">Reflect Orbital<\/a> would produce light pollution by design.<\/p>\n<p>The company promises to produce \u201csunlight on demand\u201d with mirrors that beam sunlight down to Earth so solar farms can <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reflectorbital.com\/energy\">operate after sunset<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It plans to start with an 18-metre test satellite named Earendil-1 which the company has applied to <a href=\"https:\/\/communicationsdaily.com\/article\/2025\/08\/04\/fcc-approval-sought-for-sunreflecting-satellite-2508010001\">launch in 2026<\/a>. It would eventually be followed by about 4,000 satellites in orbit by 2030, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2025-10-06\/sequoia-backed-startup-faces-pushback-over-plan-to-reflect-sunlight-to-earth\">according to the latest reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A proposed constellation of satellites has astronomers very worried. Unlike satellites that reflect sunlight and produce light pollution as an unfortunate byproduct, the ones by US startup Reflect Orbital would produce light pollution by design. The company promises to produce \u201csunlight on demand\u201d with mirrors that beam sunlight down to Earth so solar farms can [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2028,1633,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-223196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-satellites","category-solar-power","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223196\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}