Extremely bright future in the dark waiting for a new Russian satellitethat will overshadow all the objects of the night sky, except the moon and Venus.
Small Sputnik «Mayak» will be launched with the help of the «Soyuz 2.1 v» on July 14 from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. It is reported resource IFLScience.
Once the satellite is on orbit, at an altitude of 595 km, it will deploy a giant reflector of sunlight pyramid shape to Shine brighter than any other stars in the night sky.
Reflector Beacon with an area of about 16 square meters to 20 times thinner than a human hair.
It is expected that the satellite will Shine with the magnitude — measure of brightness — about -3,6, making it fourth on the brightness of the object in the sky after the Sun, moon, and Venus (in another source indicates magnitude -10, this means that the satellite will Shine even brighter than Venus).
The mission also aims to test the technology to launch satellites into orbit and how to get them out.
The project undertaken by the Moscow state engineering University, has collected more than $ 30,000 on the Russian site Boomstarter.
Despite the ambitiousness of the project, some astronomers say about some of the shortcomings of the mission. Many astronomical programs rely on monitoring the whole night sky and the bright wandering star will only complicate this process. But project Manager Alex Saenko States that «the lighthouse» won’t be a problem, as many spacecraft flying in the night sky, and some of them Shine even brighter than a new satellite.
