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Two weeks after entering solar sailing mode, the Planetary Society’s LightSail 2 spacecraft has managed to raise its orbit by nearly 2 miles, in an important test of this promising new means of ...
The Planetary Society’s LightSail 2 launched in June 2019 and unfurled its 344-square-foot (32-square-meter) solar sail a month later. Just two weeks after spreading its wings, LightSail 2 ...
The progression of LightSail 2’s solar sail deployment sequence, taken on July 23, 2019. The first 13 photos were taken at 10 second intervals, the others were taken at 30 second intervals.
According to The Pllanetary Society, in just a month of sunlight, the craft’s speed could increase over 300 miles per hour. Despite the demise of the actual LightSail, images from the mission ...
LightSail 2 is not humanity’s first success at sailing on sunbeams. That honor goes to IKAROS, a roughly 50-foot by 50-foot Japanese spacecraft weighing hundreds of pounds.
Lightsail 2’s success, made possible thanks to 50,000 crowdfunders, will be another feather in the cap for those who believe solar sail technology can one day be used to travel vast distances in ...
The LightSail 2 is capable of going higher into orbit than its predecessor, reducing that drag. The LightSail 2 hitched a ride into space last week aboard Space X’s Falcon Heavy rocket.
LightSail 2, a spacecraft funded in part thanks to crowdfunding by a community of space enthusiasts, already made history when it launched aboard SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy on June 25.
LightSail 2's 3.5-year mission came to an end on Nov. 17 when the sunshine-riding craft burned up upon reentry to Earth's atmosphere.
The space advocacy organization The Planetary Society recently confirmed that its LightSail 2 spacecraft has sent its first signals home from space. The roughly 11-lb. (5 kilograms) cubesat is ...
LightSail 2 isn’t the first solar sail. In 2010, JAXA, Japan’s space agency deployed a non-steerable solar sail that traveled past Venus, and in 2015 the Planetary Society launched LightSail 1 ...
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