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Solar-Powered LightSail 2 Successfully Calls Home, Ops Ready to Begin

The Falcon Heavy launch at the end of June marked a series of premieres for commercial space exploration. The success of the launch meant good news for all the groups that sent hardware to space onboard, including for Bill Nye and the Planetary Society.
Earth as viewed from the LightSail 2 1 photo
Photo: Planetary Society
In the cargo bay of the Falcon, if we can call it that, hidden among the many high-profile experiments of NASA and others, the Planetary Society and its leader, mechanical engineer Bill Nye, hid the LightSail 2.

This hardware, a CubeSat equipped with solar sails, is meant to prove that propulsion in space can be achieved by harnessing the energy of the Sun’s radiation.

On June 2, several days after the rocket launch, LightSail 2 departed its carrier vehicle and ventured into space alone. As soon as it did, it phoned home, at the organization’s mission control center at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in California, signaling all the systems are go.

“The Georgia Tech Prox-1 spacecraft did its job perfectly, delivering LightSail 2 to the desired orbit for solar sailing,”
said in a statement LightSail 2 project manager Dave Spencer.

“Receiving the initial radio signal from LightSail 2 is an important milestone, and the flight team is excited to begin mission operations.”

Since receiving that signal the team has been busy getting the spacecraft in order for the actual job it is supposed to perform. After the tests are completed, the 32-square-meter solar sail will be extended. Sail deployment is expected to take place this week.

LightSail is a crowd-sourced project that was born a few years ago and saw the first prototype get launched into space in 2015. For this second incarnation of the concept, the goal is to have the CubeSat orbit raised using solar photon as a means of propulsion.

For the moment, nobody is working on life-sized spacecraft powered by light.

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About the author: Daniel Patrascu
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Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies.
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