City lighting is one of the most important challenges any government must face. It needs to be high quality, withstand emergencies, and be far more efficient than average. The Tian Fu New Area Science Society believes it can replace all of Chengdu's streetlights with an artificial moon located 480 kilometers from the surface, illuminating around 50 square kilometers. The plan is to launch and activate the first of these moons in 2020, but doubts about the project are enormous.
Moving a greater amount of infrastructure to Earth's orbit presents several benefits, but we cannot ignore its difficulties. The cost of deployment and maintenance can break budgets overnight, and accelerating the installation of hardware in space also carries side effects. However, not a few believe we must start somewhere. Now, I admit that an artificial moon to replace local street lighting is not very high on my list of priorities, but things are different for the Tian Fu New Area Science Society, which plans to do exactly that, and shine light on a part of the city of Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province in China.
How the artificial moon would work
The idea is that the artificial moon serves as a complement to the real moon, although its brightness will be eight times more intense. It will be located 480 kilometers from the surface, and the illumination diameter is supposed to be between 10 and 80 kilometers, but other sources suggest an average of 50 square kilometers. The position of the light can be calibrated with a resolution of a few meters, and if all goes well, the combination of several "moons" will illuminate just over 10,000 square kilometers, almost the entire surface of Chengdu. The project's main reason is a simple matter of costs: if the reflector satellite illuminates the aforementioned 50 square kilometers, that becomes a saving for the city of 174 million dollars annually.
Concerns and a historical precedent
The problem is... everything else. Technical details are scarce, and there is not much beyond a hypothetical launch in 2020, with additional moons in 2022 if the first works correctly. The concept is not exactly new. Between 1992 and 1999, Roscosmos experimented with the Znamya series of reflectors. The first satellite worked within its normal parameters, but the second was lost due to what many believe was human error. The big question lies in the moon's orbit, because a geostationary option at 480 kilometers is impossible. The artificial moon should give rise to an entire constellation, and that's without considering the fuel demand to combat atmospheric drag. Furthermore, the project needs to evaluate aspects like light pollution, and of course, cost. Personally, I think this runs a huge risk of becoming the new TEB: a scam in disguise.
Source: The Guardian
https://old.neoteo.com/china-hizo-brotar-semillas-de-algodon-en-el-lado-oculto-de-la-luna
