sunlight This is a great source renewable energy. For this reason, more and more solar power plants are being built to phase out fossil fuels. They are usually built in very sunny locations to make the most of radiation. However, no matter how sunny the place, night means a break of several hours, with all the ensuing consequences in terms of energy. To solve this problem, an American company wants to produce sunlight on demand at night. It may soon seem lucrative, but the reality is that the consequences can be dire.
Their idea is to use satellites loaded mirrors that strategically reflect sunlightso that it goes directly to the place where the solar panels are located. But it’s not easy. According to astronomers’ calculations Michael J. Brown and Matthew Kenworthy in the article for Talkthe piece of Earth they would encounter would have to be at least 7 km. This means a much larger illuminated area than is “necessary”.
It’s not hard to imagine all the light pollution that generating sunlight at night would entail. But that’s not all. To be effective, it is also necessary to produce huge quantities space debris.
How are you going to generate sunlight on demand?
As the authors of the article describe Talkwhat did this American company call Mirror orbitThis is similar to what a watch face does when it is hit by a ray of sunlight. You can shed some light elsewhere. But in this case they don’t use something as small as a dial because they don’t want to move even a beam of sunlight. The company’s goal is launching satellites with mirrors with a diameter of 54 meters.
They hope to launch the first of these satellites in 2026. 654 kilometers from earthwhich, taking into account the angle of reflection of the radiation, is approximately 800 kilometers.
Now, if we look at the dial again and the reflected light hits a nearby wall, we will see a very bright spot. On the other hand, when we do this on the far wall, the point expands and the light becomes weaker.
These satellites are very far away, so the light received will be quite weak. Specifically, 15,000 times dimmer than the midday Sun. And what does this mean from an energy point of view? Well, essentially too little to produce enough solar energy. But this is enough to generate light pollution.
An experiment that doesn’t work in reality
Last year, the founder of Reflect Orbital Ben Novakwanted to explain how these satellites would work with a small experiment. He attached a mirror about 2.5 meters wide to a balloon located in 242 meters series of solar panels. The goal was to use a mirror to reflect light directly onto the panel and receive energy from it. He achieved this with pretty good results. In particular, on average 516 W per square meter. But this cannot be extrapolated to its satellites.
If we move from 242 meters to 800 kilometers, the dial will be too far from the wall. To actually obtain an amount of energy equivalent to the amount of energy in the experiment, larger mirrors would be required, approximately 6.5 kilometers wide. This, logically, is not viable.
In fact, with the mirror they were able to build, it would take 20% of the light from the midday Sun to reflect 3000 satellites. Less than this amount will not be enough to obtain acceptable solar energy. But there are even more problems, since the satellites are moving, so there will only be sunlight in the right place. a few minutes. To have one hour of coverage you will need at least 100,000 satellites. Novak assured that they are ready to go there. But at what cost?
Problems are growing
If you really had hundreds of thousands of satellites producing sunlight on demand, not only would lighted spots appear regularly in the sky, but there would also be a huge number technological waste in space. All this debris can collide with each other, creating a serious hazard. Moreover, these points of light moving across the sky can cause severe light pollution. We are no longer talking about street lamps, but about deliberately reflected sunlight. If an astronomer had encountered it through his telescopes, it could have caused irreparable damage to his eyes. And all this, not to mention how much it would interfere with his work.
Reflect Orbital says this won’t happen. That they will make public the moments when light hits Earth so that astronomers can plan your observations. They are not at all comfortable planning their work in accordance with the wishes of the company. But what about the rest of us, humans and other animals we encounter? effects of light pollution? An imbalance in our circadian rhythms due to lack of normal levels of sunlight and darkness can be very serious. Is it all worth it? Most scientists agree that no. Of course, solar energy is important, but given the benefit-risk ratio, it would be better to look for other ways to squeeze it out.
Source: Hiper Textual
