Imagine you’ve stepped outside on a crisp, clear autumn evening. Ah, the beautiful night sky! The awe of the cosmos! How very small we are in this vast universe, tiny specks on this pale blue dot, lucky to exist in this geological instant that Earth is hospitable to life. Truly, the sky gives us the gift of perspective—wait, is that the Pepsi logo?
It could be, at least starting in 2021. Earlier this month, Russian company StartRocket confirmed to Futurism that it was working on launching satellite ads to be viewed in the night sky. Its first client, the company said, was PepsiCo. A PepsiCo rep later confirmed to Gizmodo that the company did partner with StartRocket for an “exploratory test” advertising an energy drink but had no plans to continue advertising in space. It’s unclear whether StartRocket may have more clients lined up.
In a video detailing its vision, StartRocket’s ads rise in the sky behind the Golden Gate Bridge, the Eiffel Tower, a Bali temple, London’s Tower Bridge, and Arctic icebergs, competing with the aurora borealis. (StartRocket’s website depicts a dystopia that I cannot possibly capture in words.) The ads would be projected by a constellation of satellites orbiting at about 280 miles above Earth, each equipped with light-reflecting Mylar sails.
Since Sputnik 1 was launched in 1957, satellites have been a mostly invisible part of our daily lives, allowing us to make phone calls, monitor the weather, and map our locations. We can sometimes catch them in the night sky, but they’re hard to spot, even if you’re looking for them. Satellites like StartRocket’s Orbital Display are meant to be watched, and as satellites are becoming easier to launch, our skies could become the biggest screen of all.
StartRocket isn’t alone in the for-profit entertainment satellite game. ALE is the Japanese startup behind Sky Canvas, a project to launch a series of satellites that release shooting stars on demand—“a whole new level of entertainment,” its website boasts. Its first show will take place over Hiroshima in spring 2020.
Then there’s U.S.-based company Elysium Space, which takes artificial shooting stars to a new level: It puts on a show made from your loved ones’ ashes. The company launches a satellite full of cremated remains, which orbits Earth for a couple of years as families and friends can track its journey via an app. When the satellite falls out of orbit and burns up in the atmosphere, voilà, a shooting star. (The company also offers an option to drop off your remains on the moon, which seems like a cold, lonely place to spend eternity, but OK.) Still, that final show will not necessarily be visible to your loved ones. It’s unclear whether Elysium Space notifies them of the satellite’s reentry (we have contacted the company and will update this piece with their response), and even if it does, the festivities might happen on the other side of the planet from them, or during the day.
And why stop at shooting stars? A Chinese company is trying to make an entire fake moon. In October, Chengdu Aerospace Science and Technology Microelectronics System Research Institute Co. announced at a conference that it plans to launch an “artificial moon” satellite eight times brighter than the actual moon. The satellite would remain trained on the city of Chengdu, rendering streetlamps obsolete. How all this would work has not been made public, but CASC says it will be launching as soon as 2020.
