Did a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation with a collaborator for AST SpaceMobile's fucking huge satellite launched last month and will unfurl soon.
We got mag -12. The full moon is -13, magnitudes are logarithmic. It's a little fainter than the moon, at least?
We made lots of assumptions, so this number is quite uncertain, but it's pretty clear that no matter what, it'll be eye-blazingly-bright. And they want 400 of them.
I hate AST SpaceMobile almost as much as I hate Reflect Orbital.
@sundogplanetsProf. Sam Lawler
Venus peaks around -4.9 magnitude.
So AST's satellites at mag -12 will kinda look like Venus but almost 700 times brighter?
😮
brightness(m) = brightness(m + 1) * 2.512
The AST Blue Bird antenna at 223 sq m is 4 times the area of the BlueWalker 3 antenna shown below.
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