A Japanese firm creates on-demand meteor showers

ga(‘send’, ‘event’, ‘Uncategorized’, ‘article’, ‘article-industry-impression’, {nonInteraction: true});

Spotted: On January 17, Japanese space startup, Astro Live Experiences (ALE), launched its first microsatellite, designed to create artificial meteors. Each microsatellite will launch 400 tiny particle balls, each about a centimetre in size. These will ignite as they enter the atmosphere like hundreds of shooting stars. They are expected to burn more slowly than nature’s own meteor shows, providing a customised light show for ALE’s clients. The first meteor show is scheduled to light up over Hiroshima in the spring of 2020.

Takeaway: ALE is testing a completely new niche with its customised meteor showers. There is good news and bad. The market is promising if the fireworks business is indicative of demand. In 2016, China reportedly held 90 percent of the firework export market, and its production was worth $12 billion a year, according to a 2016 report. The business could potentially contribute to science. Founder Lena Okajima has been widely quoted saying that part of ALE’s mission is to contribute to scientific discovery through entertainment. Technologies like these could help scientists predict the path of satellites and other objects when they re-enter earth’s atmosphere. And ALE’s satellites will operate in a lesser-known part of the atmosphere. There is also the fact that on-demand meteor showers are amazing. The bad news is the increasing amount of man-made garbage in space. There are an estimated 20,000 human-made objects in orbit, and they all increase the chances of collision with expensive satellites and space missions. The technology is untested and the cost of shooting the test satellite into space is estimated at more than $1 million. Media reports to date only speculate; one report estimated the company has spent $20 million developing two satellites.

Website: www.star-ale.com/en
Contact: [email protected]

Source: New feed 1