It’s clear that Japan is taking seriously the fact that the next Olympics will be held in their country in 2020. A massive pyrotechnic display won’t do – Japanese startup Star-ALE plans to create a man-made meteor shower that will kick off the Olympic Games four years from now.

Called Sky Canvas, the artificial meteor shower will be a magnificent light show, nothing like what we’ve seen before. According to its creators, the phenomenon will be visible from an area of more than 120 miles.

And to make that happen, you need the pyrotechnics to be set above ground – and why not directly up in space? Even though the Tokyo Olympics is still years away, Star-ALE will start launching tests next year, with a series of microsatellites carrying with a special kind of pyrotechnics.

About 500 to 1,000 “source particles” will be sent in space with each microsatellite. When these special pellets re-enter Earth’s atmosphere, the friction will ignite them, causing them to glow in a man-made meteor shower effect.

At an altitude of about 35 to 50 miles, the fake shooting stars will cover the skies in a spectacular space display. Unlike a local pyrotechnics display, this space show will be visible for roughly 30 million spectators, who can just look up and marvel at the advancement of science.

According to Star-ALE founder and CEO Lena Okajima, Sky Canvas can create more than just one shooting star – the goal is having a “real meteor shower” as the project’s biggest entertainment goal.

However, making the sky a screen for your project doesn’t come cheap. Each of the beautiful pellets costs about a million yen (US $8,100). It’s also worth noting that the price doesn’t include the expenses for developing and launching the microsatellites.

The secret formula for the “shooting stars” has already been tested at the Nihon University. Shinsuke Abe, an aerospace engineering associate professor who led the research, explains that the pellets’ burning brightness was measured to rise above Tokyo’s light pollution.

At the same time, Star-ALE has also considered the challenges of a cloudy sky on the night of the show. That’s why they made sure the space display can be called off at least 100 minutes before the launch.

Thanks to this feature, the party organizers will have enough time to reschedule the space show for when the sky is clearer. It will also ensure that they don’t throw money out the window and not get to see it burn in colorful explosions.
Image Source: Lifehacker