http://www.planetary.org/about/press/releases/2009/1109_Planetary_Society_to_Sail_Again_with.html
YAY!! Thank you anonymous donator!!
I'm glad has grown up a bit, is bigger, and we'll all be around to enjoy this - it's a special project in so many ways.
I was wondering what they were about to announce, and for me this is the best announcement they could possibly have made. As a planetary society member but not a millionnaire I have to choose carefully between the many good projects for which they solicit contributions. This is the one towards which my unavoidably modest contribution was the most heartfelt. The technology will be elegant and clean, yet the scope of imagination and ambition that lies behind it is truly breathtaking. I hope this time their diamond in the sky will fly - and inspire millions young and old as it should.
What a way to commemorate the late Dr Carl Sagan... who's more beloved nowadays than ever before!
Deploying the solar sail will be the hardest bit of the mission, so all the best to the mission!
Nice little article on http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSTRE5A90EB20091110....go, TPS, go, LightSail!!!!
75 years: http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2009/11/happy-carl-sagan-day.php
There's a http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/science/space/10solar.html?ref=science&pagewanted=all in the New York Times, with some nice graphics. There's also an interesting -- but extremely negative -- http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/science/space/10solar.html?permid=32#comment32 from a reader who says he worked on solar sails at jpl and claims that the experiment won't show anything.
TTT
Not necessarily a bad thing. Thoughful technical criticism is valuable regardless of the source, and this is free to boot! Nobody ever sees all aspects of an issue, which is one reason why systems engineering was invented.
"humans may soon be solar-sailing".
Who on Earth can create such a stupid misleading comment for an artists impression ?
Depends on your definition of "soon".
Given new developments in materials technology, radiation protection technology, and space habitation technology I could imagine lofting up a self-supporting station using a massive (multi-thousand km) solar sail for a long voyage. But I think we're still a few generations off....(but I'd love to be proved wrong.)
(Fun fact: the entire Wright brothers flight could have occured inside a Boeing 747. Could the general public have imagined a 400 person passenger jet routinely traversing the Pacific at 37,000 feet back in the late 1800's?)
Baby steps...
Also depends on what you mean by 'solar sailing'. After all you can fly a kite or sail a model boat without being on board. My gripe is with the artwork itself. It appears to show a wrinkly surface on the sail panels yet the Earth's reflection is not broken up accordingly. Fortunately both the artwork and the caption pale into insignificance beside the fact that the project is going ahead.
Re: "humans may soon be solar-sailing"
The illustration is of the very light sail that the Planetary Society hopes to fly by 2011. So, yes, the humans at the Planetary Society will hopefully be solar-sailing soon. Vicariously to be sure.
By the way, http://www.ricksternbach.com/, he seems quite accomplished.
http://www.planetary.org/programs/projects/solar_sailing/lightsail1.htmlwill have four triangular sails, arranged in a diamond shape resembling a giant kite.... We plan to design, develop, build and test the LightSail-1 spacecraft so that it can be ready for launch by the end of 2010."
I will say - having tried in the past a bit - doing animations of stuff like reflective foil in deep space - it's a big challenge.
Your lens flare useage is a diagnosable psychiatric condition . Rick's use of artistic licence is entirely normal
The Brits have a killer app for sail-tech
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8590103.stm
LightSail-1 Passes Critical Design Review
http://www.planetary.org/programs/projects/solar_sailing/20100625.html
LightSail-1 Video Update: Construction Begins!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pf-NeZwBko0&feature=player_embedded
I'm curious if the camera's that were shown in the video are off-the-shelf, or were they designed specifically for the mission of LightSail-1? If they are off-the-shelf, who manufactured the camera's and optics?
The article below mentions three upcoming NASA missions (which will be flown on the venerable Delta 2 rocket) that would reach orbital altitudes that seem desirable for Lightsail-1...which The Planetary Society wants to send to an altitude of 800 km (500 miles):
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1207/16delta2/
OCO 2 (launch in 2014): 438-mile polar orbit
SMAP (launch in 2014): 423 miles above Earth
JPSS 1 (launch in 2016): 512 miles above Earth
Of course, I think TPS is planning to launch Lightsail-1 before the end of this year...so all of this may be a moot point
Almost two years since the last post; here's an informative update:
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/jason-davis/2014/lightsail-update-flight.html
Another update by The Planetary Society:
"LightSail update: Three steps forward, one step back"
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/jason-davis/2014/lightsail-update-three-steps.html
Can't wait for the announcement!
"LightSail is Ready for Launch! Join Us as the Countdown Begins"
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/mat-kaplan/20140627-lightsail-ready-launch.html
"LightSail update: Of booms and pretty pictures"
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/jason-davis/2014/20140701-lightsail-update-booms-pictures.html
Will launch on a Falcon Heavy in Spring 2016.
Drat.
LightSail-A Has a Blown Radio Amplifier. Now What?
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/jason-davis/2014/lightsail-a-has-a-blown-radio.html
Nice!
LightSail Sails through Day-in-the-Life Test
While there is still much work to be done before the team decides whether or not to send LightSail-A on a 2015 shakedown flight, Tuesday’s test sent the spacecraft over a big project hurdle—and gave the team a much-needed morale boost.
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/jason-davis/2014/20140924-lightsail-sails-ditl.html
More LightSail Day-in-the-Life Multimedia, and a Community Image Processing Challenge
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/jason-davis/2014/20140930-more-lightsail-ditl-media.html
LightSail Completes Testing, Announcement Expected in January
LightSail has now been transferred to Cal Poly. The spacecraft will be integrated with its P-POD (Pico-PolySat Orbital Deployer) in mid-January. An announcement from The Planetary Society on the status of the 2015 test flight is expected around the same time. Following P-POD integration, the spacecraft will be taken to the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. for final acceptance testing.
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/jason-davis/2014/20141209-lightsail-completes-testing.html
T-7h 30mins!
LightSail deployed successfully yesterday, amateur trackers are on the case.
http://www.satobs.org/LightSail-A.html
Wondering if anybody here can do better than https://twitter.com/elakdawalla/status/608060964731240449 that we received today. Hopefully the full image will be transmitted eventually, so it might be wasted effort. But it was a fun jigsaw puzzle to attempt
For anyone not already following, the complete version is now posted at Lightsail Mission Control. Huge congratulations to the team who it must be said have had to perform technical and mental acrobatics just to stay in the saddle. They will be hoping the voyage of lightsail-2 is equally inspirational but a lot less hectic.
Here is an attempt to reproject the image to get a top down view of the sail.
Powered by Invision Power Board (http://www.invisionboard.com)
© Invision Power Services (http://www.invisionpower.com)