MOSCOW, July 15 — The Znamya satellite project, a Russian experiment from the 1990s aimed at bouncing sunlight back to Earth via orbital mirrors, has found a second life in the hands of an American startup. Reflect Orbital, a US company, has revived the concept with a test satellite it has named Znamya-3.5, a direct homage to the original Russian programme. The mechanics here are straightforward in theory but daunting in execution.
The original Znamya project, run by the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos), involved deploying a large mirror in low Earth orbit to reflect a beam of sunlight onto the night side of the planet. The first test, Znamya-2, was launched in 1993 from the Mir space station.
It deployed a 20-metre diameter mirror and successfully cast a reflected beam of sunlight about 5 kilometres wide across Europe. A second test, Znamya-2.5, was planned for 1999. It failed to deploy properly.
The project was led by Russian engineer Vladimir Syromyatnikov, who designed the mirror deployment mechanism. The concept itself originated from the idea of using orbital mirrors to extend daylight for agriculture and to illuminate cities.
The catch, as with many ambitious space concepts, was funding and technical challenges. The Znamya experiments were discontinued by Roscosmos due to those issues. The project never moved beyond those two tests, and the idea of space-based reflectors largely sat on the shelf for over two decades.
On closer reading, Reflect Orbital’s decision to name its first test satellite Znamya-3.5 is a deliberate signal. It acknowledges the Russian lineage while skipping past the failed Znamya-2.5 directly to a new attempt. The company is effectively picking up where Syromyatnikov left off, though with modern materials and private-sector backing rather than state funding.
How this new iteration will differ from the original remains to be seen. The source material provides no details on the design of Znamya-3.5, its mirror size, or its deployment mechanism.
What is clear is that the fundamental promise — using orbital mirrors to sell sunlight after dark — is being tested again, this time by a company rather than a space agency. The follow the money question is obvious. If Reflect Orbital can solve the deployment problem that doomed Znamya-2.5, the commercial applications could be significant: selling reflected sunlight to solar farms after sunset, or to cities for lighting.
But the history of the Znamya project suggests that getting a large mirror to unfurl reliably in orbit is the central engineering hurdle. For now, Znamya-3.5 is a test.
Whether it deploys or suffers the same fate as its 1999 predecessor will determine whether this revived concept has a future beyond the homage.
