By Deborah Byrd, EarthSky News in HUMAN WORLD | SPACE | July 18, 2017
http://earthsky.org/space/mayak-bright-russian-satellite-july-august-2017
On July 14, an amateur group in Russia launched a small satellite
called Mayak. They said it would become the âbrightest shooting starâ
in the sky. Whyâd they do it? Hereâs how to look for it.
A team of young Russians â led by Moscow State Mechanical Engineering
University (MAMI) â managed to raise more than $30,000 on Russian
crowdfunding website Boomstarter, in order to launch their own small
satellite. The satellite is called Mayak, which means beacon in English.
Itâs a cubesat, roughly the size of a loaf of bread. And itâs up there.
Mayak went into space on July 14, 2017, as part of a secondary payload,
launched on a Soyuz 2.1v vehicle from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Itâll be orbiting Earth, about 370 miles (600 km) high, for the coming
month. Itâs supposed to be very, very bright, so bright that it would,
supposedly, ruin night skies and threaten astronomy.
Satellite tracking websites like Heavens Above are already trying to
follow it, hoping to offer information on Mayakâs passes over various
parts of the world. Heavens Above commented: "A new small satellite
has just been launched which will deploy a large reflector once in
orbit and has the potential to be very bright. We now have a
provisional orbit from Space-Track which you can use to generate
predictions. Please note that the magnitude estimates are possibly
very inaccurate until actual observations are reported."
Heavens-Above.com now has pass predictions up for the new Russian
reflector sat "Mayak," listing it as NORAD ID 2017-042F/42830.
http://www.heavens-above.com/PassSummary.aspx?satidB830
Plus Mayak has its own app, available to those who back the project.
See: http://cosmomayak.com/default#mobileapp
How bright is Mayak? Brightness estimates have varied, but the
idea was that it would be the brightest shooting star in the sky.
Some estimated it would be nearly as bright as Venus, the skyâs
brightest planet. Its brightness is part of its purpose, which
is partly, simply, to inspire people.
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