Last year , we told you aboutMayak , a Russian satellite that will become one of the brightest stars in the night sky . Now , it is just two weeks off from set up .
The lowly planet is in the form of a cubesat , roughly the size of a loaf of bread . It will belaunchedon a Soyuz 2.1v vehicle onFriday , July 14,from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan , as a secondary payload . The task , run by Moscow State Mechanical Engineering University ( MAMI ) , raised more than $ 30,000 on Russian crowdfunding website Boomstarter .
Once in arena , about 600 kilometers ( 370 miles ) high , the satellite is designed to unfurl a gargantuan pyramid - shaped solar reflector . The goal is for this satellite to shine brighter than any other star in the nighttime sky . To do this , its reflector made of Mylar will span 16 straight meters ( 170 square groundwork ) and is apparently 20 times thinner than human hair . The mission is also acting as a engineering demonstration , to test how to brake satellites in sphere and de - orbit them .
base on our previous calculations , we think it ’s going to shine with a magnitude ( a criterion of smartness ) of about -3.6 . This would make it the fourthly burnished object in the sky after the Sun , the Moon , and Venus . Other reports put it as bright as a magnitude of -10 , which would make it brighter than Venus .
While it might be an interesting project , that ’s not necessarily a good affair . A lot of uranology program rely on seeing the whole dark sky , and deliver an errant star drift across could put problem .
“ We fight so firmly for dark skies in and around our satellite , ” Nick Howes , an uranologist and former deputy manager of the Kielder Observatory in Northumberland , told IFLScience . “ To see this being potentially destroy by some derisory crowdfunded folderal makes my heart simply despair . ”
Alex Shaenko , the project loss leader , toldIFLSciencepreviously that it “ will not be a job , ” supply that there “ are a lot of spacecraft flying in the nighttime sky , some even bright than Mayak . ” That ’s true to an extent , but a portion of these can be easily tracked and corrected for .
For their part , the engineers behind this undertaking desire that it will encourage hoi polloi to get require with space . It will vaporize over many different locations , so it could feasibly be ascertain by a lot of people . On their website , they note the target of the projection is the popularization of “ astronautics and space inquiry in Russia , ” and increase the “ attractiveness of science and engineering training among vernal multitude . ”
It may well do that . But it might piss off a few astronomers in the process .
