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posted by martyb on Wednesday September 26 2018, @03:39AM   Printer-friendly
from the It's-a-bird,-it's-a-plane,-it's-an...art-object? dept.

Less than a year after "Humanity's Star" was launched by Rocket Lab and destroyed in Earth's atmosphere, another art project aims to place a highly reflective object in the night sky:

Now, nearly 50 years [after the Apollo 12 mission], artist Trevor Paglen hopes to draw the public's eye back to the sky with "Orbital Reflector," a sculpture made of shiny material much like Mylar that will reflect the Sun's light while orbiting the Earth. The sculpture, contained in a small structure called a CubeSat, is scheduled to launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, in mid-November. When it enters orbit about 350 miles away from Earth, the sculpture will detach and inflate to its full shape, a diamond that may shine as bright as a star in the Big Dipper. After about two months, it will re-enter Earth's atmosphere and disintegrate.

By sending an object with no military value into space, Paglen said he hopes to raise a conversation about who is allowed to operate past Earth's atmosphere. As artists and historians praise his effort as boundary-breaking, some people within scientific communities are saying it lacks a practical purpose.

Paglen, a 2017 MacArthur fellow, has long been preoccupied with the less-visible, or deliberately hidden, infrastructures that make up the world. For years, he tracked the movements of more than 180 classified U.S. military spy satellites, measuring and photographing their locations for his project "The Other Night Sky."

[...] The project has drawn some criticism and confusion from scientists who question the value of adding what they see as impractical items to Earth's orbit. "It's the space equivalent of someone putting a neon advertising billboard right outside your bedroom window," Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, told Gizmodo. [...] Paglen responded to criticisms in August in a Medium post titled "Let's Get Pissed Off About Orbital Reflector...," saying he hoped to provoke productive conversations.


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by coolgopher on Wednesday September 26 2018, @07:56AM (3 children)

    by coolgopher (1157) on Wednesday September 26 2018, @07:56AM (#740074)

    Space graffiti.

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  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday September 26 2018, @12:40PM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday September 26 2018, @12:40PM (#740126)

    What else is human existence besides making stuff happen that wouldn't happen if we weren't alive?

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]
  • (Score: 2) by zocalo on Wednesday September 26 2018, @12:45PM (1 child)

    by zocalo (302) on Wednesday September 26 2018, @12:45PM (#740130)
    If you're an astronomer or live out in the sticks, perhaps. If it's only "as bright as a star in the Big Dipper" then it's going to be pretty much lost in the glare of light pollution for a significant chunk of the population that will even know that it exists, just like the previous effort at this kind of thing. I don't really too many of the people who even had a passing interest saying they were going to make a point of going out there way to see that one either; just try and catch it in passing if they happened to be in a suitable place at the right time. Given the fleeting window of opportunity to do that most didn't even get that far, and those that did spot it were generally underwhelmed (myself included - the ISS is much more visually impressive, and leaves it standing on the technical achievement front).

    The only thing I can see this is likely to achieve is irritating a few astronomers, and (maybe) "raise a conversation" amongst peoples who will have no idea what this latest new object in the sky is - assuming they've not already given up on trying to keep their religion or whatever up to date with all the other things now flying overhead like aircraft, other satellites, etc. Many of the other people who might understand what a satellite is are probably not going to be looking up anyway because there's only a few dozen stars visible to the naked eye most nights because light pollution, so what's the point? Still, for the privilege of getting this art installation into orbit, they'll be shoving a chunk of cash into SpaceX's coffers, and hopefully they'll be able to do something more productive with it.
    --
    UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
    • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday September 26 2018, @05:21PM

      by Freeman (732) on Wednesday September 26 2018, @05:21PM (#740326) Journal

      It's a new light in the sky, oh no! Aliens!!! Because, you know someone's not going to believe the whole art aspect.

      --
      Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"