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.

0
0
0

If you have a fediverse account, you can quote this note from your own instance. Search https://mastodon.social/users/sundogplanets/statuses/115890519220360070 on your instance and quote it. (Note that quoting is not supported in Mastodon.)