26 June 2019
LightSail 2 gets ready to make its debut in space
...time to drift away. "After that spectacular nighttime launch, the flight team is ready to operate the LightSail 2 spacecraft," said LightSail 2 project manager David Spencer. "We will be listening for the radio signal in a week, following the release...
24 July 2019
LightSail 2 unfurls its sails and soars through space
.... "We now have a sail. It's time to go sailing! … We now start the very difficult process of sailing in space." The goal of LightSail 2 is to raise its orbit by a measurable amount, and show that sails of this nature are a viable means of propulsion...
03 January 2020
China tests mini solar sail in space
... only type of vehicle that could reach far-flung targets on the edges of the Solar System. Unlike LightSail 2, SIASAIL-I is a lot smaller. SIASAIL-I is a precursor mission aimed at testing a number of key technologies in orbit before the development...
January 2017
New oceans beckon for solar sail technology
...Planetary Society, flew in Earth orbit their own demonstrator, LightSail-A. This was a 3U CubeSat mission that deployed a...NanoSail-D, only larger. The Planetary Society plans to fly LightSail-2 sometime in 2017 to demonstrate deployment and control of...
July 2020
The four horsemen of space finance
... is perhaps the best known of the crowdfunding platforms hosting space funding campaigns, including the Planetary Society’s LightSail project. However, the sums involved are currently still too small to have much impact on the industry...
August 2020
Interstellar aspirations
...” and he had it right. Sunlight-propelled light sails were demonstrated by the Planetary Society in 2015 with the Lightsail-1 spacecraft and by the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) with its IKAROS probe, launched in 2010. Unfortunately, sunlight...
