E infatti:
On Monday (Oct. 2), scientists with the International Astronomical Union announced that one of the brightest objects visible in the night sky is not a star or a planet, but rather the BlueWalker 3 prototype satellite.
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Once BlueWalker 3’s antenna array was totally unfolded in space, its brightness reached a peak magnitude of about 0.4.
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Giant antenna array aside, even the satellite’s Launch Vehicle Adapter itself appeared to reach a brightness of about magnitude 5.5, which the team says is four times brighter than the current International Astronomical Union recommendation of magnitude 7.
Articolo di space.com sull’argomento.
Approfitto per segnalare anche un articolo su science.org [paywall] secondo il quale sulla carta siamo arrivati a un milione di satelliti.
Using the ITU’s ‘as received’ database, we extract filings for constellations with ten or more satellites, finding that more than 300 constellations representing over one million satellites were filed between 1 January 2017 and 31 December 2022. This is over 115 times the number of operational satellites currently in orbit. Moreover, among these 300 constellations there are more than 90 that comprise over 1,000 satellites each. Twenty-three have over 5,000 satellites, and eight have over 10,000 satellites. The largest single filing is Cinnamon-937 with 337,320 satellites.
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