Artificial Shooting Star Demonstration

ALE Co. (Star-ALE) is a Japanese company with a genuinely unique space product: artificial meteor showers created on demand by deploying specially engineered metallic pellets from a small satellite in orbit. The pellets, made from compounds chosen to produce specific colors when ablating in Earth’s upper atmosphere (80–100 km altitude), create bright shooting stars visible to observers on the ground over a target area.

The ALE-1 and ALE-2 satellites are 68 kg spacecraft carrying 400 pellets each, designed to be launched at specific pellets into a precisely calculated trajectory that causes them to reenter the atmosphere over a chosen location at a scheduled time. A single shooting star lasts 5–10 seconds and is visible across a 200 km diameter circle on the ground, enabling stadium-scale audiences to watch a coordinated artificial meteor shower display.

Beyond entertainment, ALE is developing scientific applications: the pellets can carry trace elements that fluoresce at specific altitudes, enabling measurements of upper atmosphere wind patterns, composition, and dynamics that conventional instruments cannot easily access. ALE is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, founded in 2011, and was founded by Dr. Lena Okajima (PhD in astronomy from University of Tokyo).