ALE (Astro Live Experiences)

We aim to create a place for people to enjoy the beauty and the possibilities of space in order to entice human curiosity and accelerate space development.

Created: 2020-05-30

Updated: 2023-07-15

Company - ALE (Astro Live Experiences)

Founded
Country: 2011; Japan

Funding: $48M

Website: https://star-ale.com/en/

Social

Product/Service - Sky Canvas

Classification: Miscellaneous

Category: Space Entertainment

Status: Active

First launch: 2019

Using the sky, our space entertainment business, Sky Canvas, will allow man-made shooting stars available to anyone, anywhere in the world. We aim to present the world’s first man-made shooting stars to the public in 2023.

Our man-made shooting stars can be staged anywhere in the world, both above land and sea. With a visibility range of about 200km, this new large-scale spectacle creates a shared experience amongst many people, the likes of which have never been seen.

The man-made shooting star with the second satellite (ALE-2), which was launched on 6th December 2019, as the satellite’s meteor source (particle which will be the element of the man-made shooting star) loading assistance device is not functioning correctly.

The plan was to realize the world’s first man-made shooting star in 2020 using ALE-2 but now we are aiming to use the third satellite, which is currently under development, in early 2023.

ALE announced in March 2023 the global launch of its spectacular project SKY CANVAS, set to transform the night sky into a celestial showcase for human-made shooting stars that can collect important atmospheric data in the mesosphere. Previously, it has been difficult to gather meaningful data from this layer of the Earth’s atmosphere, as weather balloons or aircraft cannot fly high enough, and it is too low to be observed by satellites.

Status Comment / Notes

The plan was to realize the world’s first man-made shooting star in 2020 using ALE-2 but now we are aiming to use the third satellite, which is currently under development, in early 2023.

ALE-2’s telemetry transmitter and battery were shut down on 4th April 2023 at 19:41(JST), because of its inability to maintain sufficient orbital altitude due to depletion of thruster fuel. The satellite is expected to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere and burn up around the latter half of April.

ALE-2 was launched on 6th December 2019, and was scheduled to be the world's first human-made shooting stars deploying satellite in 2020. However, the mission was met with an unrecoverable hurdle because of a malfunction on an onboard component. This component was the meteor source(*) loading assistance device, which was designed to load up the meteors and release them from the satellite. Despite this issue, other parts of the satellite had been functioning nominally, and the company has continued to use ALE-2 for orbital operation verification and data collection. This data and knowledge extracted from ALE-2 is being utilized in the development of ALE’s third satellite ALE-3, which is currently in development and scheduled for launch in 2024. ALE will be announcing further details regarding ALE-3 in the near future.

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News, Research, Projects and Patents

Title	Type	Date	Summary
Japanese satellite filled with 'shooting star' pellets won't spawn artificial meteor shower after all	News	2020-05-15	> We'll have to wait until 2023 to see ALE paint the sky.