Artificial moon planned to illuminate city

A Chinese city plans to send an artificial ‘‘moon’’ into orbit in 2020 to help light its streets at night.

The scheme follows experiments by Russia in the 1990s in which a 20-metre solar mirror called Znamya 2 produced a beam just over 5km wide that had roughly the luminosity of a half moon before it fell out of orbit.

Chinese scientists believe the technology has advanced sufficiently to merit trying to illuminate the southwestern city of Chengdu using sunlight reflected from an orbiting satellite.

Wu Chunfeng, chairman of the state-owned Chengdu Aerospace Science and Technology Microelectronic System Research Institute, said that the concept of an artificial moon had gained traction with the local authorities who believe it could replace streetlights in the city of 16 million people.