Japanese firm bids to welcome 2020 Olympics with ‘man-made meteor shower’
A Japanese company is proposing to open the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo with an artificial meteor shower.
Tokyo-based startup company Star-ALE ignited a space project called “Sky Canvas” which envisions to target a satellite into space loaded with about 500 to 1,000 ”source particles” that will serve as the ”building blocks” of the spectacular artificial meteor shower.
In a press statement, Star-ALE wrote, “When the satellite stabilizes in orbit, we will discharge the particles using a specially designed device on board.”
The said particles will race one-thirds of the Earth and enter the atmosphere, thus, plasma emission will occur, and not only one, but a multitude of pellets will be formed.
In a report by Tech Times, each artificial “shooting star” costs about a million yen (PhP 427,262). The expensive price tag excludes the microsatellites’ development and launch.
Star-ALE aspires to launch its first satellite by the second half of 2017, according to science news site Quartz.
If the project will be successful, the display will be visible within a 100-kilometer radius and would magnet 30 million spectators in the urban Tokyo area. If the Olympics sky happened to be entangled with misty clouds, the ambitious star display will be postponed 100 minutes before the main event and will be rescheduled when the sky is crystal clear. Gianna Francesca Catolico
