Last month, from its base in New Zealand, Peter Beck’s space company, Rocket Lab, conducted its first successful attempt to put satellites in orbit.
The launch vehicle, the Electron, carried a payload including the Humanity Star, a very shiny, 65-sided, carbon-fibre satellite whose only function is to reflect the sunlight as it spins.
Scientists didn’t approve: astronomers claimed it would interfere with their observations, others called it “space graffiti”, while the Scientific American described it as “satellite vermin”.