The new Russian satellite can soon become brightest "star" in the night sky. The device under the name "Beacon" will shall darken in heaven everything, except the Sun.
Developers are going to place the spacecraft in a solar-synchronous orbit at the height of 600 km over Earth. It means that it will be always illuminated with rays of a sunlight and will be able to reflect it on different sections of the Earth's surface in process of its rotation. The reflector has the area of 16 square meters and is made of a thin polymer film which is 20 times thinner than a human hair.
We send the spacecraft to an orbit where it will be the brightest star in a sky visible from any point on our planet and we want to show that space exploration is fascinating and interesting business, but the most important that today it it is available to all who are interested in it". — chapter of the project and the program manager of the modern astronautics at the Moscow state machine-building university Alexander Shayenko speaks.