Prof. Sam Lawler@sundogplanets@mastodon.social
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 😭
https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:vqtp5dj2o6rqnge56sz2db5a/post/3mapcxxetwk2o
Prof. Sam Lawler@sundogplanets@mastodon.social
...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)