Sky Canvas Project: Artificial meteor showers could soon be a reality: Report

Source: The post is based on the article “ Artificial meteor showers could soon be a reality: Report” published in Indian Express on 2nd April 2023

What is the News?

A Japanese company plans to launch satellites that will trigger an artificial meteor shower. The project will be called Sky Canvas.

What is the Sky Canvas Project?

Launched by: ALE, a Japanese company

Aim: To give people all over the world the opportunity to view the world’s first live human-made meteor shower.

Working of the project: ALE plans to use a pressure-driven system of gas tanks that will shoot pellets at a speed of 8 kilometers per second to trigger the artificial meteor shower.

– The metal “shooting star” particles will be taken to a low-Earth orbit by small satellites.

– Once the orbit stabilizes, the particles will be released, and they will travel around part of the planet before entering the atmosphere at an altitude of 60 to 80 kilometres.

– The company also hopes to collect atmospheric data in the mesosphere (the third layer of the atmosphere) to a further scientific understanding of climate change.

Note: The Mesosphere is too low to be observed by satellites and too high for weather balloons or aircraft.

What is a Natural Meteor Shower?

Meteors are chunks of rocks and ice that are ejected from comets as they orbit the Sun.

A natural meteor shower happens when our planet passes through the trail of debris left by a comet or an asteroid.

Around 30 meteor showers that are visible to observers on Earth occur every year and some of them have been observed for centuries. 

For example, the Perseids meteor shower, which usually happens every year in August, was first observed about 2,000 years ago and was recorded in Chinese annals.