In the most audacious attempt to rearrange the natural order of the heavens since God said "Let there be light", Russian scientists are to flood parts of Europe tomorrow night with the glow from an artificial moon.
If all goes according to plan, a pool of light roughly nine miles wide and 25 miles long, projected from space, will illuminate north Germany and Belgium shortly after sunset.
If it is a clear night the light, as bright as 10 moons, should be visible almost 200 miles from its epicentre.
Cosmonauts on Mir will direct a giant parasol attached to a Russian space tug to reflect the sun's rays on to the Earth's surface.
The experiment, known as Znamya 2.5, will illuminate six "zones" on Earth for four minutes each. The zones are in southern Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, between Frankfurt in Germany and Liege in Belgium, between Quebec and Winnipeg in Canada and between Calgary and Dayville Lake in the US.
The reflective parasol, 25 metres in diameter, was built by a Russian firm, Cosmic Regatta. Its deputy technical director, Mr Oleg Saprykin, said there was no law against shedding light on someone else's country.
"We've advertised our intentions on the Internet. We've told the media. I don't expect any protests. America financed part of the scientific research for this experiment, so they know what's going on," he said. The project is an inheritance from the Soviet era. The idea behind the space lamp was to eventually use a network of reflectors to turn night into day over the cities of the Russian Arctic. But the technology involved is also vital to realise the vision of generating electricity by channelling the sun's energy to ground stations.
Making the pool of light stand still over one spot on the Earth is exceptionally tricky, since it involves co-ordinating the movements of three objects moving at incredible speeds relative to each other: the sun, the Earth and the spacecraft. One of the advantages of northern Europe compared to the CIS, said Mr Saprykin, was that the cities shone much more brightly at night, making it easier for the cosmonauts to direct the light on to the right spot.