A RUSSIAN company has revealed a plot to turn the sky into the world’s biggest advertisement space.
Avant Space, which says it has deployed the “first space media satellite” into orbit, wants stargazers to be met with laser-light billboards when they look up at night.
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The satellite is a prototype, but Avant is planning to launch an entire fleet of these small, laser-equipped satellites into orbit.
Together, the satellites will beam advertisements across the sky – from logos, to QR codes.
In 2020, the Moscow-based company secured a patent for laser-based technology to project messages and images for advertisers onto the sky.
The start-up, which was founded in 2016, hopes to soon offer customers limited control of their satellites via an app.
The vision is “to prove that space is not just for scientists, not just for the military—it is entertainment, too. And people like entertainment,” Vlad Sitnikov of StartRocket, a Russia-based firm partnering with Avant Space, told Scientific American.
He added: “Where there is humanity, there will be advertisements – we want to be the first.”
A video from Avant shows adverts from Apple and Google being cast above cities like London, as well as car manufacturers like Mercedes having their icons emblazoned above racing tracks.
It’s a sure-fire way to get even more eyes on advertisements.
Space adverts will reportedly only be switched on during dawn and dusk over major cities to avoid interfering with remote astronomical telescopes.
Avant’s plan is also a good way to avoid any light pollution concerns, with cities already missing out on the darkest skies.
The US banned space from becoming a place for advertising in 2000.
However, this federal ban only applies to launches from US soil – and not from other countries.
The current law doesn’t stop space billboards from drifting across the sky into countries that have banned them.
The American Astronomical Society has previously spoken out against Avant Space, saying its plans present an “unknown, but potentially serious, threat to the pursuit of astronomical discovery”.
Astronomers fear that as space becomes commercialised, more companies will follow Avant Space and StarRocket.
There are also concerns that yet another constellation of satellites would complicate efforts to manage traffic in low-Earth orbit.
Low-Earth orbit is the part of space where the majority of out communications satellites sit, including Elon Musk’s 7,000 Starlink satellites.
But they’re not alone, these satellites swing round Earth accompanied by roughly 39,000 pieces of space debris – chunks and flecks of disused rockets and retired satellites.
The fear is a pile-up in the sky, whereby hundreds or even thousands of satellites create a huge debris cloud.
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What is space debris?
Space debris is an umbrella term for any bit of junk, disused equipment and otherwise, that is currently stuck in Earth’s orbit.
And it has spiralled into a big problem since the dawn of the space age in the 1950s.
There are nearly 30,000 objects bigger than a softball hurtling a few hundred miles above Earth, ten times faster than a bullet.
It poses huge risks to satellites and the International Space Station (ISS), where crew occasionally have to maneuver out of the way of objects hurtling towards them.
In 2016, a fleck of paint managed to chip a window in the ISS because it was moving at such high speeds in Earth’s orbit.
The problem is, it’s not just a space issue – but Earth’s too.
Objects in space undergo a process called orbital decay, which means they orbit closer to Earth as time goes on.
Debris left in orbits below 600km normally fall back to Earth within several years.
While most space debris burns up on reentry to Earth’s atmosphere – there are some bits that don’t.
This is particularly the case with larger objects.
A report by US watchdog, the Federal Aviation Authority, published last year warned that space debris that survived the fiery reentry could kill or injure someone on Earth every two years by 2035.
