#LightSail 2

LightSail 2 spacecraft ends solar-sailing mission in a blaze of glory | Space The LightSail 2 spacecraft will ride on sunshine no more. The Planetary Society’s crowdfunded solar sailing craft re-entered Earth’s atmosphere on Thursday morning (Nov.17) after nearly 3.5 years in orbit — more than three times longer than its designed mission life. The LightSail 2 team has received no communications from the spacecraft since that date, leading them to conclude that the shoebox-sized craft had finally given up the ghost after completing 18,000 orbits and traveling about 5 million miles (8 million kilometers) around our planet. “LightSail 2 is gone after more than three glorious years in the sky, blazing a trail of lift with light, and proving that we could defy gravity by tacking a sail in space,” science communicator Bill Nye, CEO of The Planetary Society, said in a statement (opens in new tab) . “The mission was funded by tens of thousands of Planetary Society members, who want to advance space technology." …

The solar sailing spacecraft, LightSail 2, has been recognized as one of TIME’s 100 Best Inventions of 2019. TIME praised this year’s successful mission as “a critical proof of concept.” via /r/space https://ift.tt/2OyPH5d

LightSail 2 sends its first signals back to Earth FYI: http://dlvr.it/R7xwyK

LightSail 2 sends its first signals back to Earth http://dlvr.it/R7rNys

In less than 2 weeks Falcon Heavy will carry, among other payloads, LightSail 2 via /r/space http://bit.ly/2Xi1paK

RIP, LightSail 2! You were the Kickstarter I was most proud of. The reentry completes a mission of nearly three-and-a-half years, during which LightSail 2 showed that it could change its orbit using the gentle push of sunlight, a technique known as solar sailing. LightSail 2 demonstrated that small spacecraft can carry, deploy, and utilize relatively large solar sails for propulsion. LightSail 2 completes mission with atmospheric reentry

View from LightSail 2, 9 Feb 2020 Click to enlarge This image taken by LightSail 2’s camera 2 on 9 February 2020 shows the Red Sea and the Nile River.

LightSail 2 is a Success

LightSail 2 is a Success The Planetary Society The Planetary Society has declared “mission success” on LightSail 2, its crowdfunded solar sailing CubeSat traveling around the planet. While LightSail 2 successfully unfurled its sail last week, it has now raised its orbit solely through the power of sunlight… “For The Planetary Society, this moment has been decades in the making,” said Planetary Society CEO Bill Nye. “Carl… View On WordPress

Lightsail 2

Hooray! Humanity has a working Solar Sail spacecraft , again . I’m not going to spend much of any time on what a solar sail is, or reporting on the Lightsail 2 craft itself. Other people have done that quicker and better than I could. Instead, I’m going to write about why I care about solar sails and what I think they’re good for. Simply put, a solar sail is just a giant mirror that uses the force of reflecting sunlight to push itself. It’s a spacecraft propulsion method that has the advantage of requiring absolutely no propellant and the disadvantage of providing a very, very small amount of thrust. And that means that they are best suited to robotic missions with travel times that span years, rather than crewed missions that only expose humans to the hazards of space for hours, days, or even months. There are technically ways that a solar sail could be used to propel crewed spacecraft, but most of those ways involve giant lasers and are best ignored for the moment. So why do I care about a propulsion method that’s so limited in its uses? Because one of the better uses is moving asteroids around . Near Earth asteroids are a hazard, and also potentially a resource. And we can’t do a thing about them either way unless we have a means of moving them around. I like to fantasize about cities in space, but that’s a dream that can’t begin to come true until we can move mountains in space. Solar sails are a nice step along that path.

LightSail 2 Spacecraft Successfully Demonstrates Flight by Light Years of computer simulations. Countless ground tests. They’ve all led up to now. The Planetary Society’s crowdfunded LightSail 2 spacecraft is successfully raising its orbit solely on the power of sunlight. Since unfurling the spacecraft’s silver solar sail last week , mission managers have been optimizing the way the spacecraft orients itself during solar sailing. After a few tweaks, LightSail 2 began raising its orbit around the Earth. In the past 4 days, the spacecraft has raised its orbital high point, or apogee, by about 2 kilometers. The perigee, or low point of its orbit, has dropped by a similar amount, which is consistent with pre-flight expectations for the effects of atmospheric drag on the spacecraft. The mission team has confirmed the apogee increase can only be attributed to solar sailing, meaning LightSail 2 has successfully completed its primary goal of demonstrating flight by light for CubeSats.

LightSail 2 sends its first signals back to Earth ICYMI: http://dlvr.it/R7vXG1

I’ve been more in awe of an event only twice in my life before this rocket launch: during the solar eclipse, and when I visited an international dark sky park and saw nearly every visible star in the sky. Dark Falcon Heavy ranks #3 now.

LightSail 2 deploys in 2019

LightSail 2 Mission is Going Strong and Sending Mission Info Home! On June 25th, 2019, The Planetary Society‘s cubesat spacecraft known as LightSail 2 lifted off from the NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard a Falcon Heavy rocket. This was the second solar sail launched the Society, the first (LightSail 1) having been sent into space in 2015. Like its predecessor, the purpose of this spacecraft is to demonstrate the technology that would allow for solar sails operating within Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Since reaching orbit, the LightSail 2 has been indicated that it is in good working order, as indicated by the Mission Control Dashboard recently introduced by The Planetary Society. In addition to establishing two-way communications with mission controllers and passing a battery of checkouts, the spacecraft also took its first pictures of Earth (and some selfies for good measure). LightSail 2 is the third attempt to send a light sail spacecraft into orbit by the global non-profit society, which is devoted to promoting space exploration and the technologies that enable it. The first was Cosmos 1, a larger lightsail that launched in 2005, but which failed to reach its intended orbit due to an unforeseen failure with the rocket. Since reaching orbit, the Planetary Society has been providing regular updates on the mission. The public is also encouraged to get status reports from the spacecraft in near-real-time using the LightSail 2 Mission Control dashboard that recently went live. Updates are transmitted from the craft every few seconds via a 334-line text file containing health and status information. This including temperatures, battery levels, spacecraft rotation rates, and the status of the sail. This data is then analyzed by the team and displayed on the dashboard, the entire archive of which is available for download. On the evening of Friday, June 5th, the mission controllers reported that the CubeSat’s dual-sided solar panels had successfully been deployed.

We Just Got Incredible New Photos of Our Lonely Little World From LightSail 2. “LightSail 2 is a technology demonstration mission for the most part. And it’s been successful so far. In January 2020, the Planetary Society released a paper outlining the mission results. In brief, LightSail 2’s solar sails are working, though the spacecraft is still expected to fall to Earth within a year of launch. The spacecraft carries cameras, of course. Those cameras are there primarily to check on the solar sails. But while doing that, they’re capturing some delicious photos of Earth in the background.” https://www.sciencealert.com/the-planetary-society-just-released-these-incredible-new-photos-from-lightsail-2?fbclid=IwAR1p7AfTyiSejSRAm2lA68h406_7spFWJjozsdLeP5W2MvG7DaBnFlUc7pw

LightSail 2: Pesawat Ruang Angkasa Layar Surya Siap Jelajahi Antariksa

LightSail 2: Pesawat Ruang Angkasa Layar Surya Siap Jelajahi Antariksa TECHSTORY.ID, SURABAYA – Pesawat ruang angkasa yang memanfaatkan cahaya matahari sebagai bahan bakar atau layar surya bukan lagi hanya sebuah fiksi ilmiah. Kini, pesawat ruang angkasa tersebut sudah dapat diwujudkan dan akan segera melakukan perjalanan ke luar angkasa. Planetary Society, yang berbasis di Amerika Serikat, telah siap untuk mengujicoba versi terbaru dari pesawat layar surya mereka,… View On WordPress