Project Starshine (Student Tracked Atmospheric Research Satellite for Heuristic International Networking Equipment) is a 19 inch hollow, spherical satellite covered with 900 tiny aluminum mirrors. It was launched on May 1999 from NASA's Space Shuttle. Students around the world helped polish the quarter-sized mirrors and will track this satellite visually for several months, during morning and evening twilight. The students then calculated its orbit from shared data and then deduce the atmospheric density from drag-induced changes in its orbit over time. Starshine orbited Earth for 8 months and then disintegrated in February, 2000.

The STARSHINE (Student Tracked Atmospheric Research Satellite Heuristic International Networking Experiment) series of satellites were student participatory missions sponsored by NRL. STARSHINE-1, launched in 1999, was a spherical satellite that carried nearly 900 small mirrors polished by students from around the world. Once launched, the network of over 20,000 students from 18 countries tracked the satellite through the glinting of sunlight off the mirrors and networked the data collection over the Internet.

Starshine is the name of two fictional superhero characters owned by the Marvel Comics company. The first was an alien woman named Landra who first appeared in Rom the Spaceknight #14 (1980) by writer Bill Mantlo and artist Sal Buscema. The second was an Earth girl named Brandy Clark, who first appeared in Rom #1 (1979) again by Mantlo and Buscema.

The light of the stars.