Through crowdfunding, the artificial shooting star project is given new vitality.
A Japanese
firm has decided to relaunch its project to produce fake meteor showers.
Tokyo-based
ALE (Astro Live Experiences) had originally intended to use its ALE-2
satellite, which launched in December 2019 on a Rocket Lab Electron booster, to
produce artificial shooting stars in 2020.
However,
when technical difficulties hampered the endeavor, ALE promised at the time
that it would start a new meteor effort in 2023. Even though the business has
returned with a new project that relies on crowdsourcing, there is no set date
for when the shooting stars will start to appear because that rest on the unveiling
of a new satellite.
Through a
brand-new Sky Canvas Community Club that will offer non-fungible tokens (NFT)
linked to privileged advantages for members, ALE is pleading with the public
for support. However, the bitcoin community, which supports "alternative
currencies" outside of conventional markets, is closely associated with
NFTs.
The
Securities and Exchange Commission has cautioned that investing in
cryptocurrencies carries significant risk, including the possibility of
participating in Ponzi scams. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, members
of the cryptocurrency community have been strongly associated with misogyny and
other behaviours that limit variety, discourse, and respect.
ALE did not
say whether the NFT sale is currently the only way to raise money or if investors
will provide additional sources of financing. Additionally, they did not
specify when they intended to deploy the satellite that would produce these
meteors.
However, the
meteors will "combine critical climate research with a new form of space
entertainment [that] we believe... can further our scientific understanding of
climate change," according to CEO Lena Okajima, who stated this in a
release on Thursday, March 30.
The business
has stated that it will make the meteors available for significant occasions.
According to their proposal, pellets composed of "harmless
substances" would be fired from a satellite and would burn 37 to 50 miles
(60 to 80 km) above the Earth's surface, creating.
More
practically, the spheres could aid in data collection from the mesosphere, a
layer of the Earth's atmosphere that is too high for research by balloons but
too low for high-resolution satellite vision. The mesosphere has been
identified as a crucial factor in studies of climate change.
Real meteor
showers typically involve tiny dust or particle fragments moving quickly
through our atmosphere, occasionally appearing in clusters as our planet passes
through asteroids or cometary debris.
The precise
brightness of these man-made meteor showers is unknown. More generally, the
space community has issued warnings regarding light pollution brought on by
bright satellites like SpaceX's Starlink, which is already obstructing
telescopic observations and Indigenous astronomy and culture, both of which
rely on clear skies.
Reference:
space.com
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