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Old 18-07-2017, 02:03 PM
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pluto (Hugh)
Astro Noob

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Join Date: Dec 2011
Location: Sydney
Posts: 1,982
I was just about to post about this, it launched a few days ago.
It's listed on Heavens-Above but with no visible passes yet. From what I can gather it will spend the first 4 weeks in a controlled orientation for tracking. Then it will deploy the 'sails' and it will be put into a spin of around 1 revolution per second! This should make it a very bright twinkling 'star' of up to mag -10!!

References:
For Sydney: http://heavens-above.com/PassSummary...alt=40&tz=AEST
http://spaceflight101.com/soyuz-kanopus-v-ik/mayak/
http://cosmomayak.com
http://space.skyrocket.de/doc_sdat/mayak.htm
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