Lighting a big city at night can be quite expensive and also leave a massive carbon footprint, so it is worth hearing alternative ideas on how to light the streets of a city in a more environmentally friendly way. This must have been thought by the Chinese city of Chengdu, which represents one of the three most populous cities in western China. The idea to solve this problem is unusual and at least original: to place a second, artificial moon in the sky.
This has been announced by Chengdu city officials who presented their plans to build an artificial moon and launch it in 2020 , in order to remain in the sky over Sichuan province.
The city has already approved the plan proposed by a private aerospace company to launch this large reflective satellite into orbit that can reflect light rays from the Sun to the city uninterruptedly. The satellite would thus act as an artificial moon that would flood the city with a “evening glow” throughout the night, thus rendering useless all street lamps and night lighting of the streets in general.
Because a large amount of electricity in Chengdu is generated by coal-fired power plants, the plan certainly offers a carbon-neutral alternative. It is an idea related to solar energy that had not been considered before. Not at least that ambitious.
As they explain, this artificial moon will reduce the costs of operation and maintenance of the street lamps.
What would this artificial moon look like?
The satellite would have solar panels with a super-reflective coating. Supposedly, the illumination generated by the reflective surface would be about 8 times what you would expect from the real Moon, and the light would have a similar hue to that of darkness. Furthermore, the beam of light would be carefully controlled so that it only illuminated an area 10 to 80 kilometers above the ground. In this way, it would not be visible to anyone else outside the city limits.
The researchers also claim that the light would not interfere with any nocturnal wildlife activity and will have minimal ecological impact, although this remains to be seen. It’s hard to imagine how an unnatural nighttime glow wouldn’t have some kind of impact on the behavior of animals, and even plants. Obviously, it is something that the artificial lighting that we have now also does.
It is not the first time that an initiative of this type has been carried out. In 2013, the Norwegian city of Rjukan placed three large computer-controlled mirrors in the mountains surrounding the city to track the movement of the Sun and reflect its rays onto the town square . Rjukan never sees the sun in the winter, due to the protection of the surrounding mountains.
Of course, placing mirrors on mountain tops and placing them in orbit are considerably different engineering challenges, so it will be interesting to see if this plan will finally come to fruition in 2020.
A similar project was also presented by Russia in the 1990s, with the launch of a solar reflection system, a “space mirror”, intended to produce light “equivalent to three to five full moons” covering an area of approximately 5 kilometers.
Another Russian attempt to launch a space mirror in 1999 failed before taking off.
The company that will develop the idea also believes that this false moon could become a tourist attraction , bringing people from all over the world to experience Chengdu’s unusual nightlife.
Reference: Asia Times
