Startup brilliantly demonstrates how it plans to sell sunlight from space at night in stunning clips

Toned dusky orange, when the Sun dips into the horizon, sunlight withdraws itself and the sky turns dark. Outside in nature, there remains no source of light except for the faint twinkle of stars and a dim moonshine. In this scenario, the onus of illuminating the world goes to things like electric lights, lamps, and candles. But by no means can their light compete with sunlight. So, a California startup called “Reflect Orbital” came up with the idea of selling sunlight on demand, “after dark from space,” reported VICE. Their X bio reads: "We sell sunlight after dark."

“This company is selling sunlight,” exclaimed @SievaKozinsky on X where millions of people viewed his post. “Seriously,” he remarked, “The idea is that you open their app at night, click a button, and they use a satellite to beam light on your exact position so that you can see in the dark.”

A few years ago, Reflect Orbital’s founder and CEO, Ben Nowack, spoke to VICE, elaborating why he chose to sell solar power at night. He said, “I had an interesting way to solve the real issue with solar power. It’s this unstoppable force,” and added, “Everybody’s installing so many solar panels everywhere. It’s really a great candidate to power humanity. But the sunlight turns off. It’s called nighttime. If you solve that fundamental problem, you fix solar everywhere.”

According to Space, their initial vision for this project was to craft a constellation of 57 small satellites that would orbit Earth in a formation sun-synchronous polar orbit, at an altitude of 370 miles. In that orbit, the satellites would circle the planet from pole to pole while the planet rotates underneath them. The satellites would pass each spot two times every 24 hours. This would provide an additional 30 minutes of sunshine to power plants, at the time when energy is most needed. The satellites will be equipped with ultra-reflective mylar mirrors that will bounce sunlight back to Earth using GPS to locate the position of its Earthling customers. Mylar is a plastic material used in space blankets, insulators, and packaging. The mirrors are engineered to concentrate light into a sleek beam as delivered to customers or solar farm operators.

According to VICE, the company’s mirror-studded space reflector will be launched in 2025, and people can “apply for sunlight” for the next few months. There is already a flux of over 30,000 applications for people eager to experience the golden sunlight in the dark of the night. “We want to make it as easy as possible—like, log into a website, tell us your GPS coordinates, and we get you some sunlight after dark,” said Nowack.

On August 22, 2024, Nowack also shared a small video of a boy signing up to buy sunlight via their app, and instantly there is a glimmer of sunlight in the sky on top of his head. It seems as if the Sun god himself has outsourced the latest space technology to proffer humans with the bounty of his light even when he is not present at a given place. With Reflect Orbital, the Sun god is literally omnipresent.