Trevor Paglen 'Orbital Reflector'

[Grey Havoc]

ORIGINAL CAPTION: Digital Rendering of Orbital Reflector. Copyright Trevor Paglen. Courtesy of the Artist and Nevada Museum of Art.

Trevor Paglen is an American artist, geographer, and author, known for his artwork in the field of mass surveillance and data collection. His work was exhibited in the Smithsonian American Art Museum and The Barbican in London. In 2018, Trevor turned his interest to Space. He launched the Orbital Reflector, a 1.5 million dollars, 30 m-long diamond-shaped gold mylar balloon on board a Space-X rocket. The balloon was not able to deploy as planned, and the Orbital Reflector never reached the skies, however, it raised an interesting debate about the use of space.

Trevor Paglen‘s Orbital Reflector was a light-weighted, 30m-long diamond-shaped gold mylar sculpture developed closely with NASA for 10 years. The artist began gathering a team of academics, engineers, and aerospace experts as early as 2008 and then reached out to the Nevada Museum of Art which decided to sponsor the project.

It was launched – after multiple attempts- aboard a SpaceX Falcon-9-rocket in 2018. Once in low Earth orbit, at a distance of about 575 kilometres from Earth, the CubeSat that contained the Orbital reflector opened to release the sculpture, which should have self-inflated like a balloon. The idea is that as soon as the sunlight would have hit the sculpture, the balloon’s reflection should have been visible from Earth with the naked eye for about two months, before harmlessly burning out. However, due to a loss of contact with the ground, the US Air Force could not find which CubeSat contained the Orbital Reflector and did not authorize the release of the balloon.

#SpaceWatchGL Opinion: American artist Trevor Paglen is questioning whose space belongs to - SpaceWatch.Global

By Valerie Chartrain Trevor Paglen is an American artist, geographer, and author, known for his artw

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