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FCC approves giant space mirror as astronomers warn of risks to the night sky
(www.thebrighterside.news)
this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2026
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It's easy to remove any number of mosquitos from your house, 1 person and a swatter can get it done. It's incredibly expensive, laborious and dangers to remove LEO satellites. If something malfunctions then it's essentially a stuck there until shot or nudged down.
Well, it wasn't my metaphor, I'm not really defending it.
That said, you do seem to have missed the point of a metaphor. Nobody is arguing that mosquitos in a house are more of a problem than satellites... Comparing the two directly was not anyone's intention.
Sure it wasn't a great comparison in the first place. What I'm trying to communicate is that astronomers already have to deal with space trash as is, it's a legitimate problem to their observations. Having a giant object to reflect potentially, and without constant upkeep certainly, become especially large space trash. Removing faulty equipment is already an inefficient expensive process. Everything becomes depreciatied at some point. I'm just hoping if this type of project comes to pass that it also has an plan in case of accident or insolvency.
There's actually a rational reason to not worry about LEO space mirrors becoming potential space junk. They just have an extremely high surface area to weight ratio, meaning they're going to experience relatively high drag. If something like this is abandoned in low earth orbit, it would probably deorbit relatively quickly, like in a matter of months.
I'm not suggesting that this mirror is a good idea, it's unclear what the use case even is. But I am saying that it's not any more dangerous than any of the dozens of smallsats launched by University robotics programs. People don't tend to have any problem with that kind of satellite, though they're probably more likely to be abandoned relatively quickly and they would stay in orbit longer than a satellite that has what is essentially an enormous sail.