Russia to make its Mayak satellite the third brightest object in sky after sun and moon
20 Jul 2017
Russian State Space Corporation Roscosmos is all set to deploy an experimental Russian satellite which might become the third brightest object after the sun and the moon.
The satellite, named ''Mayak,'' is one of the 72 small satellites which were launched into space atop a Russian Soyuz rocket over this weekend. It had been officially confirmed, that the agency was gearing up for installing a tetrahedron-shaped solar reflector aboard its Mayak 3U-CubeSat, which will make it the third brightest object in the universe.
Last week, on 14 July 2017, Russia's State Space Corporation Roscosmos successfully set out a cluster of record-breaking satellites, which included an earth observation Kanopus-V-IK satellite, which was the primary payload alongside 72 smallsats from the Baikonur Spaceport at 09:36 Moscow time. The satellites were put into different orbits for conducting various assignments, and Mayak was among the 72 satellites sent into space atop a Russian Soyuz rocket.
Mayak, which stood for 'beacon' in English, was developed by a team of young scientists from the Moscow Polytechnic University (MAMU). It was a standard CubeSat similar in size to a loaf of bread. Now, the Mayak 3U-CubeSat was gearing up to deploy a revolutionary and outsized tetrahedron-shaped solar reflector which was expected to turn the simple satellite into the third brightest object in the sky after the Sun and the Moon. As officially announced, Mayak was the first crowd-funding satellite of Russia.
Mayake, created by young scientists, was the first crowdfunding spacecraft in the history of Russia. The team had released a video that detailed the satellite, its mission and the purpose of its creation.
The team managed to raise over $30,000 on Russian crowd funding website Boomstarter to launch their own small satellite.
The satellite will orbit the earth from a distance of 370 miles (600 km), carrying a giant mylar reflector with a surface area of 170 square feet atop.
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