Brightest 'Star' in the Sky May Soon Be This Russian Satellite

Soon, there may be a new human-made “star” gliding across the heavens that will be brighter than both the International Space Station and the planet Venus. Mayak, the Russian word for “beacon,” is a pyramid-shaped satellite that is the brainchild of a group of students at the Moscow State University of Mechanical Engineering (MSUME), who successfully crowdfunded the money to build and launch the probe. Their 3U CubeSat is part of a flotilla of 73 satellites hitching a ride aboard a Soyuz rocket scheduled to launch on June 14 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. More

(Source: National Geographic - Jul 15)