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FCC approves giant space mirror as astronomers warn of risks to the night sky
(www.thebrighterside.news)
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this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2026
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Not really extreme. The whole concept is bonkers. What right has a company to destroy the night huge numbers of people and not mention wildlife.
Don't worry it's not going to happen. They're just after investor money then they'll vanish.
Even if they actually build this, a very small area of the planet is going to be imperceptibly brighter for 35 seconds.
People also said A.I. wouldn't happen. I don't trust them to not find some way to implement it in the worst possible way that impacts all of humanity. Like permanent daylight or something so there's never time to sleep but now there's 12 more hours in the day
They're still limited by the laws of physics and geometry. Assuming perfect reflection and perfect alignment with the sun to the target destination you're looking at something like 0.1 percent of the total brightness worth of energy being transmitted to the surface of the earth.
In other words, considerably dimmer than the moon. It's not going to turn night to day, it's not even going to turn at night to dusk, it will be the brightness of a crescent moon on an overcast night, assuming clear conditions. Covering an area of less than 3 km for a period of time of less than 20 minutes (increase the orbital altitude and you increase the amount of time that you can be over an area but you also decrease the brightness) I don't think Mr Badger is really going to notice.
But as I said this is irrelevant because they know this which is why they're not going to do it.
I agree with you that the current thing seems innocuous enough… but I think we've all been traumatised by recent events. Things have had a way of escalating extremely quickly, like: "oh yeah, we just approved 10,000 more satellites without even giving the general public a chance to react, so what?" Also, someone should coin that anime name.
It's a 5km diameter target area. It's not going to be shining on random patches of wilderness.
That's just for one mirror, they're saying they want fifty thousand up there.
But they only have approval for one.
It’s a 50k constellation or some proportion that’s the problem. Also it’s who gets to approve such a monstrous plan? Surely not a national government as it is an international issue.
The FCC. It's in the title. There's more detail in the article if you want.
Satellites have always been regulated by the nation they're launched from or owned by. There are international treaties regulating some aspects of that, but treaties are implemented by their signatories - the national governments.
My point is why the FCC? It is a US government entity and as the current US government is pretty rabid, why should they be able to inflict this sort of thing on the the rest of the world? Maybe this will be a straw too many and force change. The whole Starlink debacle is bad enough but to add huge mirrors is just madness.
The article explains the answer to this very question.
Yep, it say the FCC only looks at communications and not light pollution or congestion. That it is a US government entity and doesn’t mention anything outside the US.
So there you go. That answers your question.
You may think there should be a federal agency whose job is to regulate light pollution from satellites, but there isn't one. You may think there should be some kind of international body that is able to impose decisions on all the nations of the Earth, but there isn't one - treaties are agreements between sovereign nations. And so the FCC approved this satellite, in accordance with the laws of the United States and in accordance with the treaties the United States has signed. Nothing underhanded or nefarious is happening here.