LightSail

LightSail Test Mission Declared Success

Posted in Hardware on 10th Jun, 2015
by Alex Muller

The Planetary Societys LightSail test mission successfully completed its primary objective of deploying a solar sail in low-Earth orbit.

LightSail Drama Continues as Spacecraft Wakes for Second Time

Posted in Hardware on 7th Jun, 2015
by Alex Muller

LightSail is back in business, following the second extended outage of the test spacecrafts mission.

LightSail spacecraft is back in touch with Earth after rebooting itself

Posted in Software on 31st May, 2015
by Alex Muller

About a week after its launch on May 20th, LightSail lost the ability to send data to the crew because of a software glitch.

Software problem 'pauses' LightSail mission

Posted in Software on 29th May, 2015
by Alex Muller

The Planetary Society says that its LightSail solar sail mission has been 'paused' due to a software glitch, which has frozen the onboard computer.

Solar sail mission launches with X-37B spaceplane

Posted in Science on 22nd May, 2015
by Alex Muller

The light-propelled LightSail is a CubeSat about the size of a loaf of bread, built by the Planetary Society as a technology demonstrator for a non-rocket propulsion system.