From the article:

In a license issued on Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission gave the green light for Reflect Orbital of Hawthorne, Calif., to launch its Eärendil-1 satellite into low Earth orbit. The company plans to deploy its test satellite this year but has said it eventually wants to send as many as 50,000 big mirrors into space.

The approval came despite a flood of opposition from astronomers, wildlife experts and others who say the light from the mirrors could distract airplane pilots, wreak havoc on astronomical observations and interfere with circadian rhythms, the light-and-dark cycles that help people, animals and plants know when to wake and sleep, to bloom or to migrate.

[...]

Roughly the size of a dorm fridge, Reflect Orbital’s first prototype, once in space about 400 miles up, would unfurl a square mirror nearly 60 feet wide. The mirror would bounce sunlight to illuminate a circular patch about three miles wide on the Earth’s surface.

Reflect Orbital hopes to launch 1,000 larger satellites by the end of 2028, and 5,000 others by 2030. The largest mirrors are planned to be nearly 180 feet wide, reflecting as much light as 100 full moons.

The F.C.C. stressed, however, that it was approving only “a single demonstration satellite” that would test a technology that could advance American leadership in outer space. “Reflect Orbital’s demonstration satellite is an example of a potentially groundbreaking technology,” the commission said in its order granting the license.