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On-demand, artificial meteor showers are discussed in

Are these now officially a thing? If so, how much do they cost? Are they happening regularly, or at least occasionally? Has the "box full of 1cm balls released into LEO" been emptied yet? Is it at least half-empty or half-full depending on your perspective?

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They are not yet a thing, but are still being worked on. The system will launch on the Electron rocket. The cost isn't known, but it will be launched on an Electron rocket, costing \$6 million, and likely at least the same for the spacecraft. Let's just call it \$20 million total. One big question is how many shows can it generate per satellite. Let's go with 4 showers/ kg, and 20 kg of material for each mission. That gives 80/ launch as possible, so at least \$125,000/ shower. Each shower may only include a few particles, as few as 20.

These are all rough, and subject to change, but should be accurate to within an order of magnitude. The biggest unknown is the amount of material required to generate a shower.

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    $\begingroup$ Sounds like a stealthy way to get commercially owned and operated anti-satellite weapons into orbit. $\endgroup$
    – Solomon Slow
    Aug 27, 2020 at 17:30
  • $\begingroup$ @SolomonSlow indeed! This from 2018 discusses that while the proposed spacecraft will orbit below the ISS, spy satellites may dip even lower at periapsis. Even if it doesn't hit them, simply asking for permission to release a group of "meteors" at a specific place and time becomes a way to "detect" if a spy satellite will be there at the same time or not. It may turn out that this never actually happens, but rather than killing publicly it just gets pushed down the road long enough that it ultimately never happens; will be interesting to watch! $\endgroup$
    – uhoh
    Aug 27, 2020 at 23:03
  • $\begingroup$ The first link in the post that my first link links to is On-demand shooting stars? Japanese startup dreams big and there's an example of what they are thinking of. Because they can control the chemical content, the meteors can be fairly small, but I think you estimates are close enough. $\endgroup$
    – uhoh
    Sep 23, 2020 at 15:52

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