LightSail-2 deploys solar sail, beginning orbital operations (July 23, 2019).
Four weeks after launching on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Florida, The Planetary Society’s LightSail-2 spacecraft successfully deployed its solar sail July 23.
Four cobalt-alloy booms unraveled from the main spacecraft bus with the triangular segments of mylar sail material. Once fully unraveled, LightSail 2′s solar sail covers roughly 32 square meters.
Deployment occurred at 12:45am EDT over Mexico in range of the mission’s San Luis Obispo, California control center. Two cameras with a 185 degree field of view provided footage of sail deployment and other orbital imagery during the spacecraft’s mission. The spacecraft is orbiting 447 miles above the Earth.
LightSail-2 undergoing preflight sail deployment testing in California in 2016. P/c: The Planetary Society.
LightSail-2 is the Planetary Society’s second, larger solar sail testbed spacecraft, having launched the smaller LightSail-1 in 2015. That mission, which launched piggyback with the X-37B spaceplane on an Atlas V rocket, spent 25 days orbiting the Earth and validating the spacecraft’s sail design.
Major differences between the two spacecraft include the addition of a reaction wheel to orient the spacecraft and a cluster of mirror’s on the vehicle’s underside that will aid in precise ground-based measurements.
With LightSail-2, the Society hopes to prove that sails could be used for orbit raising and other maneuvers in space, ultimately reducing the cost for cubesats to travel beyond low Earth orbit.
Solar Sailing as a technology was first proposed by Planetary Society cofounder Carl Sagan in the late 1970s as a method of deep-space propulsion that utilized photos from the sun as fuel. Much the same way as wind on Earth pushes a ship’s sail, solar sails in space would be propelled by photons from the sun pushing against a large surface area.
The Society expects LightSail-2 to remain in orbit for at least a year. As the spacecraft’s apogee, or highest point slowly raises, its perigee, or closest point slowly lowers, eventually causing the sail to plummet into the atmosphere and burn up.
Click here for our coverage of the LightSail program.
P/c: The Planetary Society/Jason Major
