Rocket Lab Reveals 'The Humanity Star,' a 'Disco Ball' Satellite Shining From Space

A commercial space company seeking to shine among the satellite launch industry has secretly sent its own "star" into orbit.

Rocket Lab on Wednesday (Jan. 24) revealed to the world that "The Humanity Star" is circling Earth and is expected to become the brightest object in the night sky. Covered in 65 highly-reflective panels, the satellite is rapidly spinning, reflecting the sun's light back onto the planet, much in the same way that a disco ball casts light onto a dance floor.

From the ground, the geodesic sphere-shaped satellite will appear as a bright, glinting star quickly traversing the night sky.

Secretly launched on board "Still Testing," the second test flight of Rocket Lab's Electron carbon-composite booster, The Humanity Star satellite lifted off on Sunday (Jan. 21) at 2:43 p.m. local time (0143 GMT; 8:43 p.m. EST Jan. 19) from the U.S.-based company's Launch Complex-1 on the MÄhia Peninsula in New Zealand.

The 55-foot-tall (17-meter) Electron rocket also lofted three commercial nanosatellites: a Dove Pioneer Earth-imaging satellite for Rocket Lab's launch customer, Planet, and two weather and ship tracking Lemur-2 satellites for Spire. The latter two satellites were subsequently sent into a circular orbit by Rocket Lab's kick stage, also revealed this week.

“All the aiming is done at the beginning yet we are so good that if we target the 50 yard line of a football stadium we will hit the stadium.”

That’s pretty amazing! I had a boss/mentor/friend that used to do photo interpretation for the Air Force back in the 50’s or 60’s for targeting the missiles. It sounded like they had sort of a rotation of various hot spots in the USSR depending on what was happening at the time.

We were out of town at a conference (the late 90’s), and at dinner one time ended up at a table with a bunch of Russian scientists. We would get to talking, and every single one of them he would ask where they were from. And he always had a story to tell of him targeting their city for some reason or another. “Oh yeah - Vladivostok. That was always high on our targeting list because of the submarine base!” But even some places I had never heard of he would have some reason. “.... they had the XYZ facility there on the north side of town.” I was sort of embarassed at the time. But pretty funny at the same time.

He was the kind of guy that sort of came across as the old, bumbling out-of-touch character. But his memory was unbelievable with pretty much anything - places, people, numbers, science facts, etc.

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