{"id":929841,"date":"2026-10-16T04:14:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T04:14:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/929841\/"},"modified":"2026-10-16T04:14:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T04:14:12","slug":"a-startup-wants-to-sell-sunlight-at-night-so-it-lit-up-mount-whitney","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/929841\/","title":{"rendered":"A startup wants to sell sunlight at night. So it lit up Mount Whitney."},"content":{"rendered":"

On Saturday night, residents of Lone Pine, a small Eastern Sierra town near Mount\u00a0Whitney<\/a>, were baffled by a pair of blinding lights illuminating the desert south of town. In what should have been a pitch-black sky, the beams seemed to come out of nowhere, casting a glow across the landscape.<\/p>\n

The company wants to build a network of satellites that reflect sunlight onto specific locations on Earth at night, potentially illuminating everything from city streets to industrial sites. The proposal has drawn criticism from scientists and dark-sky advocates concerned about the effects of disrupting the natural nighttime environment.<\/p>\n

On top of commercial uses, the company is also pitching an application of the technology that could save lives \u2014 helping search-and-rescue teams find people in the dark.<\/p>\n

On Saturday, the company set up powerful spotlights along Horseshoe Meadows Road near Lone Pine to simulate the illumination its proposed satellites could provide. The test was conducted with China Lake Mountain Rescue and other volunteer search-and-rescue personnel, who practiced grid searches, stretcher carries and equipment rigging both in darkness and under the lights.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe mounted powerful mobile lighting near the peak of Mt. Whitney to recreate the light spot our satellites will deliver,\u201d Christopher Buscombe, a spokesman for the company, told\u00a0SFGATE in an email. \u201cThe aim was a precise, realistic simulation of the spot, so emergency responders could see how our technology will perform in real scenarios.\u201d<\/p>\n

Phillip Cash, operations leader for China Lake Mountain Rescue,\u00a0told the San Francisco Chronicle<\/a> that the illumination was slightly brighter than a full moon, allowing searchers to see roughly 3 miles in every direction. (The Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms.)<\/p>\n

Cash said the extra visibility made navigating terrain easier, though he stopped short of suggesting the technology would fundamentally change routine nighttime rescues. \u201cWe\u2019re pretty good at working at night already,\u201d he told the Chronicle.<\/p>\n

The announcement doesn\u2019t mean Reflect Orbital\u2019s mirror satellites are ready to provide nighttime illumination, but it\u2019s another step in securing the rockets needed to get them into space. Reflect Orbital said it has received Federal Communications Commission permission to operate its first spacecraft and expects search-and-rescue teams to be among its earliest customers.<\/p>\n

The proposal has drawn criticism from astronomers, scientists and dark-sky advocates who warn that reflected sunlight could interfere with astronomical observations, disrupt wildlife migration and feeding patterns, and throw off the natural light-dark cycles that plants, animals and humans need. Some researchers have also raised concerns about the potential effects of artificial light on human sleep and long-term health.<\/p>\n

In March, Ruskin Hartley, CEO of DarkSky International, told SFGATE that he was \u201cextremely concerned\u201d about the project moving forward. \u201cThis is clearly an unprecedented assault on the nighttime environment,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Saturday night, residents of Lone Pine, a small Eastern Sierra town near Mount\u00a0Whitney, were baffled by a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":929842,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[64,63,128,496566,365519,283473,285],"class_list":["post-929841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-science","tag-sfgmountaintowns","tag-sfgparks","tag-sfgtech","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=929841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929841\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/929842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=929841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=929841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=929841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}