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posted by janrinok on Tuesday November 21 2017, @06:02PM   Printer-friendly
from the oooh-aaaah! dept.

Stuff will be flown into space for the purpose of burning it so people can look at it:

Meteor showers are an awe-inspiring sight, and skywatchers often plan well in advance for their shot at spotting shooting stars as they rain down from the heavens. The rare events have, up until now, been a totally natural phenomenon, but one company is planning on turning on-demand meteor showers into big business, and it's scheduled its first man-made shooting star showcase for early 2019.

The company, called ALE, has created a spectacle it calls Sky Canvas, and it's as close to controlled meteor showers as we may ever get. What makes it so interesting is that this isn't some kind of slight of hand or illusion, but actual material dropped from special satellites burning up in the atmosphere to produce a brilliant light show overhead. It's wild, wild stuff.

The cube-shaped satellites that control ALE's Sky Canvas are tiny — less than two feet on each side — but they carry the proprietary pellets that create the "shooting stars" and can be controlled remotely from the ground. On command, the satellites release their payload, which then falls to Earth and, after coming into contact with the intense friction of the atmosphere, ignite.

Manmade explosions over Hiroshima?


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 21 2017, @11:12PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 21 2017, @11:12PM (#599948)

    Things in orbit only "fall to Earth" in movies.

    Unless there is some propellant they are not talking about.

  • (Score: 3, Touché) by takyon on Wednesday November 22 2017, @04:33AM (1 child)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Wednesday November 22 2017, @04:33AM (#600042) Journal

    Things in low Earth orbit eventually deorbit due to atmospheric drag. Including the ISS if it stopped correcting its orbit. So do want to argue that the ISS is not actually orbiting Earth?

    The summary does imply there is a propellant of some kind being used to control them.

    --
    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 22 2017, @09:47AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 22 2017, @09:47AM (#600119)

      The part that confused me: why would the (micro) satellite have to release the pay-load?

      To return to Earth, each of the proprietary "pellets" would have to do their own station-keeping, like any other micro-sat.