For The Next 9 Months, the Brightest Object in the Night Sky Will Be a Tiny, Disco Ball
It’s not a bird, a plane, or Superman. That shiny, shimmering object suddenly sparkling in the night sky is a satellite launched by Rocket Lab, the latest edition to a growing cadre of space businesses. On Sunday, the California-based company hoisted what it is calling the “Humanity Star” onto one of its rockets and launched the 65-sided geodesic sphere into orbit from New Zealand.
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The idea behind the highly-reflective, disco-ball like object is that it will be a new focal point for everyone on Earth, according to Peter Beck, Rocket Lab’s CEO.
“No matter where you are in the world, or what is happening in your life, everyone will be able to see the Humanity Star in the night sky,” Beck said in a statement. “My hope is that all those looking up at it will look past it to the vast expanse of the universe and think a little differently about their lives, actions and what is important for humanity.”
Made from carbon fibre and festooned with 65 mirrored triangular panels, the Humanity Star will shimmer and spin as it makes its sojourn around the planet every 90 minutes. The giant disco ball will meet its fiery death nine months later as it crashes back into Earth’s atmosphere.
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The sparkly new addition to the night sky will also draw attention to Rocket Lab, a company that’s only recently begun to make a splash in the global space industry. Founded more than a decade ago by Beck, an aerospace engineer and New Zealand native, Rocket Lab is backed by Silicon-Valley based venture capital firm Khosla Ventures and aerospace firm Lockheed Martin.
Unlike SpaceX and Blue Origin, which are competing to build large rockets capable of delivering big payloads into orbit, Rocket Lab aims to build smaller rockets that are equipped to send tiny packages – all for a lower cost than the alternative. If it works, it could fill what many experts say is a growing and unmet void in the global space industry. Rocket Lab isn’t alone in the venture. In March, Richard Branson’s company, Virgin Galactic, launched spin-off company Virgin Orbit to focus on quickly and cheaply launching smaller satellites into orbit.
“It’s been clear to me that there’s been something changing,” Dan Hart, Virgin Orbit’s president,told Space.com last spring. “I’ve really admired a lot of the bold moves that have gone on in the industry over the last five to 10 years, where people are doing commercially what was once only done with large, large government-funded programs.”
You can track the Humanity Star in real time and see when it will be visible from different parts of the world at Rocket Lab’s Humanity Star site.