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Unmanned Spaceflight.com _ Private Missions _ LightSail 2

Posted by: nprev Jun 24 2019, 02:49 AM

We are now just over 24 hours away from the beginning of the launch window for the third Falcon 9 Heavy from Kennedy Space Center, which among other payloads wlll carry The Planetary Society's LightSail 2 spacecraft. We'll talk about it here.

GO LIGHTSAIL!!! GO TPS!!!

Posted by: nprev Jun 25 2019, 09:11 PM

Well, it made it into orbit & apparently sail deployment will occur in about a week.

Posted by: nprev Jul 3 2019, 01:45 AM

The spacecraft has successfully separated from its host Prox-1 and has downlinked. Full story and details of future events http://www.planetary.org/blogs/jason-davis/first-contact-lightsail-2.html?fbclid=IwAR0bkyKJJ7GemAsVTB8_mrcd35yf5V_oD4WB8ZUkjwvgwiYoFlgInJ-OFtw.

Posted by: nprev Jul 7 2019, 09:48 PM

Panel (and panel-mounted camera) deployment occurred on Friday evening US Pacific time. Images and status update http://www.planetary.org/blogs/jason-davis/lightsail-2-first-pics.html?fbclid=IwAR0QsSCZqcjeitqrChCb51134jvcZlN3BUE3HGRfovXL9p_YOvgxkWf4FwA.

Posted by: atomoid Jul 24 2019, 11:08 PM

i remember the efforts to get this going in the 90s, its been such a long time coming, but finally http://www.planetary.org/blogs/jason-davis/ls2-deploys-sail.html!
they put together a cool gif anim of the unfurling sails

images look much better than i expected, all raw images are https://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/data/ls2/all.html

Posted by: nprev Jul 25 2019, 12:46 AM

Truly a triumph for citizen science and the realization of a dream long held. Congratulations to the LightSail team!!!

Posted by: Explorer1 Jul 25 2019, 02:37 AM

Lovely views! I still remember the disappointment with Cosmos 1; glad to see there are more reliable launchers these days!
Now to look forward to Lightsail being spotted from the ground...

Posted by: Steve5304 Jul 25 2019, 04:25 PM

QUOTE (Explorer1 @ Jul 25 2019, 03:37 AM)

Lovely views! I still remember the disappointment with Cosmos 1; glad to see there are more reliable launchers these days!
Now to look forward to Lightsail being spotted from the ground...

Me also!!

I am more excited to see what sort of data they gather. They have speculated for hundreds of years about this sort of thing.

Bring on the data!!!

Posted by: elakdawalla Jul 25 2019, 05:03 PM

QUOTE (atomoid @ Jul 24 2019, 03:08 PM)

i remember the efforts to get this going in the 90s, its been such a long time coming, but finally http://www.planetary.org/blogs/jason-davis/ls2-deploys-sail.html!
they put together a cool gif anim of the unfurling sails
images look much better than i expected, all raw images are https://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/data/ls2/all.html

Thanks, that gif is mine

Please have fun with the image data! The pictures are a lot better than I expected, too. I'm curious to see creative approaches to dealing with the bizarre wide-angle camera distortion. My approach is simply to enlarge the original photo by a factor of 5 or so, then apply the Photoshop geometric correction filter at its maximum level multiple times, then downsize to 2x original resolution. I don't find that sharpening the resulting image helps much, but I suspect I'm just not picking the right set of parameters.