Crowd funded Russian bright artificial star proposal unpopular with astronomers

[gary]

In a February 2016 article on iflscience.com, Jonathan O'Callaghan
reports on the concern by amateur and professional astronomers
over a crowd-funded project out of Moscow State University to
launch a satellite that would unfurl a 16 square metre solar reflector
to make it the brightest star in the sky apart from the Sun.

Originally Posted by Jonathan O'Callaghan, iflscience.com

A team of Russian scientists is planning to launch a unique satellite into orbit, with the goal of making it the brightest star in our skies (aside from the Sun, of course) with the use of a giant reflective sheet of material. But there are some possible negative consequences if this ever gets off the ground, notably for amateur and professional astronomers alike.

The team of engineers behind this project, from Moscow State Mechanical Engineering University (MAMI), is running a crowdfunding campaign on the platform Boomstarter. The spacecraft is known as “Mayak,” or “Beacon” in English, and they have raised more than 1.7 million rubles ($22,000.) Having met their funding goal, they are now aiming for a launch in summer this year on a Soyuz-2 rocket with the assistance of Roscosmos, the Russian space agency.

Article here -
http://www.iflscience.com/space/russ...star-night-sky

[csb (Craig)]

From the article: "We want to show that space exploration is. . . accessible to everybody who is interested . . . "

Accessible to every crackpot, selfish egotist, amoral commercial interests, etc!

[multiweb (Marc)]

So much energy and effort put into something so useless. The mind boggles. With a bit of luck it would look like grated gruyere after being hit by all the junk up there in a matter of months.

[bojan]

Nothing new here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Echo

[csb (Craig)]

Except, bojan, that Project Echo wasn't actually to just put a bright star in the sky.

That's a very interesting article on research & development leading to orbital satellites.

I'm especially surprised of their understanding of materials properties so as to be able to make a rigid sphere, 41 metre diameter, which did not need internal gas pressure to maintain shape.

[pluto (Hugh)]

Even if they manage to get that thing into the planned orbit (which they won't be doing with a budget of $20k without a donated launch) surely they'll have no hope of keeping it in the correct attitude. The Solar radiation pressure on a cubesat with a giant sail sticking out of one side, with its centre of mass basically at one edge, will get it spinning very quickly! That's why the Lightsail project put so much effort into making sure the satellite is balanced.

Such a waste... Surely there are many other cubesat projects that could inspire people - and actually do something useful at the same time!



EDIT: Just read the translated BoomStarter page and it seems there's the possibility of a ride on the launch of the "Canopus-B-IR" satellite... Oh no!

[Atmos (Colin)]

If it is sufficiently small and light enough, there is usually a cargo space at the top of the rocket people can use.... For a hefty fee obviously. There have been a considerable number of school scientific projects that have been done using this space for getting small satellites up there. CUBE Sat comes to mind, pretty sure that's how they got them up there... Although I wouldn't be quoting me on that