WASHINGTON — Astronomers are calling on nations to ban advertising in space that can be seen from the ground, calling it the latest threat to the dark and quiet sky.
At a briefing during the 245th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society earlier this month, the organization rolled out a statement calling for bans on “obtrusive space advertising” because of the interference it could cause for groundbased astronomy.
Obtrusive space advertising is defined in U.S. federal law as “advertising in outer space that is capable of being recognized by a human being on the surface of the Earth without the aid of a telescope or other technological device.” Such advertising is banned in federal law through prohibitions on granting launch licenses for missions carrying payloads to carry out space advertising.
While that federal ban has been in place for decades, John Barentine of Dark Sky Consulting, a member of AAS’s Committee for the Protection of Astronomy and the Space Environment (COMPASSE), said at the briefing there is growing concern that companies in other nations would launch obtrusive space advertising payloads.
“The lure of it is so great that I can’t imagine that no one will try,” he said. “I think the commercial value will prompt somebody to do it.”
There are no imminent space advertising efforts Barentine said he was aware of, but he did cite one Russian company, Avant Space. That company launched a 3U cubesat in April 2024 that was designed, the company stated, to test technologies for a proposed future constellation of satellites that would maneuver in orbit and shine lasers to form logos or other images for advertisers.
Avant Space has disclosed few details about that demonstration satellite or plans for deploying a constellation. “Their technology demonstration was evidently successful, as far as anybody knows,” Barentine said.
Another Russian company, StartRocket, announced in 2019 that it had a contract with the Russian subsidiary of PepsiCo to promote an energy drink using space advertising, with a fleet of smallsats reflecting sunlight with Mylar sails to form the logo. However, PepsiCo’s U.S. headquarters said it was not pursuing such advertising after conducting an “exploratory test” using a high-altitude balloon.
The AAS, in its statement, called for a global ban on obtrusive space advertising “by appropriate international convention, treaty, or law” and urged the U.S. delegation to the United Nation’s Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) to advocate for such a ban.
Barentine said he would like the U.S., at COPUOS, “to go actively promote this issue and try to establish it as at least a norm within the international community to not engage in this form of advertising.”
