The Guardian reported.<\/a><\/p>\n
![\"Streak](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/barge-holding-tanks-complex-39a-123221333.jpg\")
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches EchoStar 25 from Launch Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida on Tuesday, March 10, 2026. Joe Marino\/UPI\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n
They were referring to a James Bond movie-esque proposal by California startup Reflect Orbital to dispatch 50,000 mirrors in low orbit. In theory, these would redirect sunlight to the planet\u2019s night side, potentially powering solar farms after sundown, providing light for rescue workers, and other applications.<\/p>\n
The company could illuminate swaths between three and four miles with these cosmic night lights, whose brightness would range \u201cfrom full moon to full noon,\u201d per the firm.<\/a> Reflect Orbital is already awaiting Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approval to launch a test satellite with a 60-foot-wide mirror into space with the potential to get the project off the ground as early as this summer, the New York Times reported.<\/a><\/p>\n This celestial \u201cvanity\u201d project coincides with a plan by SpaceX to launch a staggering <\/a>one million satellites into space to form a veritable constellation of AI data centers, thereby taking a load off their terrestrial counterparts.<\/p>\n Environmentalists warned that these spacey installations would cause a catastrophe back on Earth. \u201cScientific studies have already shown that the existing number of satellites in orbit (around 15,000) has increased diffuse night sky brightness, or sky glow, by roughly 10%,\u201d declared Ruskin Hartley, the chief executive and executive director of DarkSky International, a non-profit focused on fighting light pollution.<\/p>\n Now, multiply that factor by over 66.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, biomedical science professor Professor Tami Martino, who is president of the Canadian Society of Chronobiology, cautioned that this could throw our biological clocks off-kilter. <\/p>\n \u201cCircadian systems are sensitive to light levels far below what humans typically perceive as bright,\u201d she declared. \u201cIf the night sky becomes permanently brighter, the consequences could ripple through ecosystems in ways we do not yet fully understand.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the presidents of World Sleep Society, European Sleep Research Society, Sleep Health Foundation, Australian Sleep Association and Australasian Chronobiology Society wrote in a letter that throwing the circadian rhythm is not mere inconvenience; it is a physiological mechanism driving major adverse health consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n One could perhaps think of it like of Alaska\u2019s endless, slumber-disrupting summer light, which natives combat using blackout curtains.<\/a><\/p>\n At an ecological level, the number of satellites could blot out the sky, potentially disrupting the migration routes of bugs, birds and other animals that use the stars as a navigation tool.<\/p>\n This is more than just speculation. <\/p>\n![\"Streak](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/spacex-falcon-9-rocket-rises-125109049.jpg\")
\u201cThe proposed scale of orbital deployment would represent a significant alteration of the natural night-time light environment at a planetary scale,\u201d leaders of the European Biological Rhythms Society (EBRS), the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms, the Japanese Society for Chronobiology and the Canadian Society for Chronobiology declared in\u00a0letters\u00a0to the US Federal Communications Commission. Getty Images<\/p>\n