Rocket Lab Criticized For Launching Their Own Private 'Star' Into Orbit (newsweek.com)

Newsweek reports: A private satellite company launched a three-foot-wide, carbon-fiber orb called the Humanity Star into the sky last week. Rocket Lab has promised the Humanity Star will be "the brightest thing in the sky," presumably other than the sun. The orb will reflect light from the sun back to Earth to achieve this effect. It's expected to orbit the Earth once every 90 minutes for the next nine months before it falls out of the sky and burns up in the atmosphere. The reaction on social media has been largely swift and scornful...

The stated goal of the project, at least, seems admirable: "No matter where you are in the world, rich or in poverty, in conflict or at peace, everyone will be able to see the bright, blinking Humanity Star orbiting Earth in the night sky," Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck said in a statement on the project's website. "Wait for when the Humanity Star is overhead, and take your loved ones outside to look up and reflect. You may just feel a connection to the more than 7 billion other people on this planet we share this ride with."
Slashdot reader dmoberhaus writes that "astronomers are annoyed by what they perceive as just another piece of space junk getting in the way."

"Wow. Intentionally bright long-term space graffiti. Thanks a lot Rocket Lab," complained an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology. And one New Zealand journalist accused Rocket Lab of "vandalising the night sky with shiny space rubbish."

Comments

Eh, bright?

[Ecuador]

No idea why anyone is upset. Sure, if you start putting dozens of disco balls in orbit there might be an issue, but this one you can't even see! When they say "bright" they mean that once every quite a few days it might pass above you in just the right orientation and angle from the sun so that one of its mirrors hit you directly during the night with sunlight at a maximum brightness of... magnitude 4.2... If you don't know what that means, it is about as bright as the stars in the middle of the little dipper "handle", the ones you can't see from the city. So cities are out, rural areas can see it, but still it is nowhere as bright as other satellites, ISS etc.
In any case best data for when/how bright: heavens above.