It's an incredible first for pyrotechnics and rocketry but a Japanese startup based in Tokyo has announced it has the technology to make man-made meteor showers on demand and will flaunt this at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

The company named Star-ALE calls its artificial meteor shower technology "Sky Canvas," which it bills on its website as "the Future of Entertainment in Space." It said Sky Canvas will paint the night sky with shooting stars and describes itself as "a pioneer of space-age entertainment."

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Here's how it plans to make artificial meteor showers.

The meteors are called "source particles" specially developed by the company. Tests showed the particles' brightness while burning makes them visible even in Tokyo's brilliant light pollution.

From 500 to 1,000 of these particles can be packed into a small microsatellite, which is a satellite with a mass between 10 kg and 100 kg. These microsatellites will be taken into low Earth orbit (LEO) aboard commercial launch vehicles.

Once into LEO, the microsatellite stabilizes in orbit and discharges the particles using a specially designed device. The particles travel about one-thirds of the way around the Earth and re-enter the atmosphere.

It will then begin "plasma emission" and become a shooting star. Sky Canvas can continuously eject source particles, allowing the creation of a real meteor shower.

The company explained that a particle in space, even with a size of a few millimeters, enters the atmosphere and burns brightly in a process called plasma emission. Its goal is to artificially recreate this process in Sky Canvas.

"Making the sky a screen is this project's biggest attraction as entertainment. It's a space display," said Star-ALE founder and CEO Lena Okajima.

Each artificial "shooting star" costs some $8,100 or one million yen. This price tag doesn't include launch cost and other expenses. A video of Sky Canvas can be seen here.

TagsStar-ALE, Sky Canvas, source particles, meteor shower, meteors, Japan