Screenshot of the landing page of the company Reflect Orbital (file) | Image credit: Reflect Orbital
Reflect Orbital, a lighting and energy company, wants to sell sunlight to its customers at night for their needs and is working to improve its light-harvesting technology to power solar farms and provide paid solar energy after dark.
The company’s co-founders are engineer Ben Nowack, who previously worked at SpaceX, and aircraft enthusiast Tristan Semmelhack, who has experience in developing drones.
“Reflect Orbital sells sunlight using a constellation of space reflectors,” the company said about itself on its official website.
In March of this year, the company’s co-founders announced that they would develop a constellation of revolutionary satellites to sell light to solar farms.
“We believe sunlight is the new oil and that space is ready to support energy infrastructure. This flight test was the last piece needed before we launch beyond the atmosphere,” Nowack said on X on March 13, adding that he wants to “commodify sunlight.”
Reflect Orbital has invited users to apply for sunlight through its website, but the “product” is not yet shipping.
The company noted that the application deadline is October 23 this year at 12pm PT, and deliveries will not begin until the fourth quarter of 2025. According to the application form, users can try to get four minutes of light for a diameter of 5 km.
On August 22, Nowack posted a video showing a person toggling the light selection on the company’s website map to illuminate their real-time location at night, but the founder did not specify whether the effect was actually achieved by redirecting sunlight using the company’s technology or just by flashing a light for promotional purposes.
Others criticize the idea, saying that allowing people to soak up sunlight at night using only their smartphones could add to the already high levels of light pollution, and could disturb people in the area while they sleep—not to mention wildlife.
According to Nowack, there is great interest in the company’s product.
“Wow, that’s crazy – 31,768 uses for our sunlight. 10x more than yesterday. It’s gone up by several hundred while I was typing this. So good!” he posted on X on August 26.
Reflect Orbital stated on its website that the company is “aggressively hiring.”