The California demonstration by Reflect Orbital used spotlights to imitate sunlight-reflecting satellites.

On October 10th, Reflect Orbital set up powerful spotlights near Lone Pine, Calif., to simulate the illumination its proposed satellites could provide. The sudden light came as a surprise to local residents.

Reflect Orbital

On Saturday, October 10th, Hayley Carter, an office technician in Inyo County, California, was on an evening walk with her husband through their 700-person town of Independence when she saw a mountainside awash in light. With the sun already set and elk bugling in the distance, she had been expecting the dirt desert roads they wandered to be dark and still. But when their path turned south toward the Sierra Nevada mountains, she saw what looked like a big, lit-up building in the distance.

“What on Earth is that?” Carter recalls thinking. The pair’s first thought was that a movie crew might be filming — not uncommon in the picturesque desert.…