The FCC licenses a test satellite that would reflect sunlight at night
On 9 July 2026 the FCC authorized Reflect Orbital to build, launch and operate Earendil-1, an experimental satellite carrying an 18-metre thin-film reflector that is meant to illuminate spots 5 to 6 kilometres wide at night from an altitude of about 625 kilometres; WIRED reported the decision on 14 July. The agency licensed a single demonstration satellite rather than a constellation and said effects on optical astronomy fell outside its review. Nearly 2,000 public comments questioned the proposal, and the American Astronomical Society, DarkSky International and the Royal Astronomical Society warned about effects on astronomy, nocturnal ecosystems and aviation safety; the company has pledged that illumination will be precisely controlled, limited in brightness and duration, and coordinated with affected communities and scientific institutions, and that it will measure real-world impacts rather than rely on assumptions.
The record ends here. Everything below this line is invented.
What if sunlight was dispatched and billed by the minute by 2031?
Part one
Exclusion Zone
The order came in at 11:04, wrong in three ways at once.
Four minutes of illumination at ten times the rate. Coordinates inside the amber polygon around the Alto survey site. No stated purpose: one word, "event".
She flagged it anyway. The desk got two kinds of impossible orders: midnight wedding photographs with the sun behind them, and night shifts without a generator. This client was a holding company above a mailbox service.
The alert stream stayed open on the wall, because her trainee, Pavel, had asked what the flags meant. She had told him the truth: a telescope under a dispatched beam loses what it was about to see, and the stream is where the sky says so. One flag had sat there since eight, beside the order.
She put the windows side by side. The client's four minutes began at 03:16:30; the alert's track crossed that field once, at 03:16:30.
The order was not asking to light the desert. It was asking to erase four minutes of sky.
Sunlight cannot be kept in a box the size of the patch it is billed for. The air scatters it the way a lamp lights fog, and one mirror at 625 kilometres brightens a smear of sky far wider than the patch it was paid for. Fifty thousand of them would be weather.
Pavel watched her from the next console. At 11:19 her supervisor's message arrived. "Client is certified. Window approved. Confirm."
Her cursor sat on the button.
What’s real
- The FCC licensed one 18-metre mirror satellite in July 2026.
- It would light a 5-to-6-kilometre spot from 625 km up.
- Astronomers warned about observatories, wildlife and aviation safety.
- The company has pledged brightness limits and coordination.
What’s invented
- Marisol, her trainee Pavel, and the illumination dispatch desk.
- The minute rate, the standing orders and the salvage client.
- The exclusion polygon drawn after the crossing.
Part two: The Geometry Correction
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Filed under space, satellites, astronomy, light pollution.