The founders of the new startup are planning to launch satellites that will entertain viewers with artificial meteor showers.
The private company Astro Live Experience (ALE) is set to release an artificial meteor shower over Japan by 2020. The show will take place in the skies over the cities of Hiroshima, Iwakuni, Takamatsu and Matsuyama. They plan to drop meteorites from satellites, the first launch of which will take place at the end of 2018.
Josh Rodenbaugh, a company employee, shared the details with BuzzFeed. According to him, each satellite will weigh 68 kilograms and will be able to rise to an altitude of 350 kilometers. Its capacity is enough to carry 400 artificial meteors and a fuel tank that will allow the device to stay in low-earth orbit for 27 months. The cost of one model is three million dollars.
The creators of the device promise that it will produce 15 to 20 small capsules, each of which is a little more than a centimeter. These multi-colored pellets burn up in five seconds, leaving a trail similar to a meteorite.
In the future, the founders of the startup hope to send three sets of six satellites into orbit. This will allow organizing shows anywhere in the world at the request of customers. Josh Rodenbaugh added that the price tag will not exceed 40 thousand dollars - this is how much a large-scale fireworks in Tokyo costs.
Some in the space industry have already considered such plans overly ambitious. For example, Patrick Seitzers, an astronomer at the University of Michigan, called the idea bad "from an orbital point of view." In his opinion, in the next decade there will be many satellites in low-earth orbit, and the Astro Live Experience vehicles will only interfere. If in 2020 one of the satellites flies over Japan at an altitude of more than 200 kilometers, then the meteor shower will have to be canceled.
Alexey Evglevsky