Young scientists from Russia want send to space a satellite 2 weeks later. This is an artificial star which have a pyramid shape and becomes one of the brightest objects of the night sky.
The satellite name is Mayak which means "beacon". Satellite will be released on 14 July with a Sojuz 2.1v launcher from the Baikonur space port in Kazakhstan. The project is run and funded by the Moscow State Technical University (MAMI), and the staff of the institute collected more than $ 30,000 $ in community funding.
The device will circulate about 600 kilometers above the Earth's so-called sun-synchronous track, which means that it will pass almost everywhere at local time and will always reach sunlight. Like most crowdfunding efforts, this one comes with a mobile app, which will give users the location of the satellite at any time.
Once in orbit, Beacon will inflate into a pyramid shape with a surface area of 172 square feet (16 square meters). Made of reflective metallized film 20 times thinner than a human hair, the satellite is expected to become the brightest man-made object in orbit ever.
The goal of the project is the “popularization of astronautics and space research in Russia, as well as improving the attractiveness of science and technology education among young people.” They want to show that almost anyone can build and send a spacecraft into orbit, not just corporations and governments. Among those goals is a real flight test of an aerodynamic braking device, which subsequently can be used for de-orbiting space debris. This will utilise Mayak’s pyramid as a reference object for checking calculations of apparent magnitude of space.
The problem of space debris has become more and more important – for now, there are over 100 million pieces of debris smaller than 1 cm, and more than 1,500 objects, over 100 kg, moving around the Earth at speeds of 7 to 8 km/s, which is really dangerous.
Also, it will help to gather new information about the density of air at high altitudes.
For more information please visit the project official site : http://cosmomayak.ru/
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