We can make our own meteor showers now?! Woah. 

This sounds wonderful.

High above Earth, a satellite traveling 7.8 kilometers a second opens on one side and launches 1,000 spherical pellets. Though this might sound like the opening scene of a science fiction movie or a villain plot from the world of James Bond — it is anything but.

It is the vision of Lena Okajima, CEO and founder of the Japanese startup ALE. She and her team have developed the pellets. The precise recipe is kept secret, but the result of their chemical composition is not.

As the pellets fall through Earth’s atmosphere, they will start to burn, lighting up the night sky as a multicolored artificial meteor shower. At the same time, this new nighttime entertainment will do its bit for science.

“I hope the meteors — or shooting stars, if you will — will be both mesmerizing and inspiring. At the same time, they will generate new insights into a part of the atmosphere that we know relatively little about,” Okajima says.