Heaviest (and probably brightest, until Reflect Orbital's awful mirror) satellite ever is supposed to launch sometime tonight. I hate AST SpaceMobile only slightly less than I hate Reflect Orbital.
One news article suggested that there was a chance of a collision during the launch window so they had to shift it?! Need a CRASH Clock for launches now too, apparently.
Here's a (messy, quick, not peer-reviewed) animation I threw together* using one of AST SpaceMobile's requested orbital configurations. These AST satellites are so bright that if you were standing in downtown Toronto on the summer solstice, in the night sky you'd be able to see the moon, Venus, and a handful of AST SpaceMobile satellites all night long.
*the code was part of a peer-reviewed paper: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-3881/ac341b
RE: https://mastodon.social/@sundogplanets/115748537218476769
Here's a nice, angry op-ed I got invited to write for Nature about AST SpaceMobile's first stupidly bright satellite a couple years ago: https://rdcu.be/drQOU
And just a reminder, if you're half as pissed off about stupidly bright satellites as I am, DarkSky International has an open letter to Reflect Orbital and their investors that you can sign here:
Damn, looks like the freaking huge AST satellite launched successfully. I guess we'll find out soon how incredibly fucking bright and radio-loud it is đ
https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:vqtp5dj2o6rqnge56sz2db5a/post/3mapcxxetwk2o
...and how hardy it is to debris hits. That's a big cross-section: 2,400 square feet, a bit bigger than a basketball half-court. This paper https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027311772030644X suggests 1 hit energetic enough to penetrate 1 mm of aluminum per m^2/yr from debris and 1 from micrometeorites at AST's altitude, so about 1 hit per day. Good luck...
(Especially given a much smaller Starlink satellite and the similar cross-section Chinese space station both likely got hit by debris in the last few days)
@sundogplanets @cosmos4u
Do you have the size of the solar arrays for Starlink v2 and v3 satellites?
For v3, one website states a 60x7m size, which is almost 2x the size of the 223 sq m AST phased array.
And presumably, there will lot more Starlink v3s than AST Bluebirds. What a nightmare :(
@michaelgemar @sundogplanets I remember that for a while project "loon" was trying to provide remote Internet connectivity using high altitude balloons. Seems a lot simpler to me since they can come down when they need repair, but what do I know, that project was discontinued for some reason or another.
Maybe it's because airspace is heavily regulated by the country that owns it but no one has that control in space.
@sundogplanets GEO used to be a civilised place, but things are changing. The rendezvous & proximity operations that the US, Russia and China are doing do risk other operators. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/why-us-and-chinese-satellites-are-dogfighting-in-orbit/ar-AA1SAnEY
The whole ITU approach to orbital fillings needs to change, but it's unlikely because just like every other consensus-based regulation there's no enforcement when a bully decides that 'might make right".
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