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Projects: LightSail - Solar SailingProject UpdatesMarch 6, 2011: Testing Sail Deployment The first full scale deployment of the Planetary Society's LightSail-1 solar
sail was conducted on March 4, 2011 at Stellar Exploration in San Luis Obispo,
California. February 9, 2011: LightSail-1 on NASA Short List for Upcoming Launch NASA announced that the Planetary Society’s LightSail-1 solar
sail mission is on their short list for upcoming launch opportunities. The
missions selected are Cubesats destined for piggyback launches as part of
NASA's CubeSat Launch Initiative. November 18, 2010: NASA's Nanosail to Fly this Week NASA's Nanosail-D is scheduled to launch on Friday -- and we wish them well. Nanosail is an innovative development by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight and Ames Research Centers, and in many ways is the inspiration for the Planetary Society’s LightSail spacecraft, scheduled to be ready early in 2011 to carry out the first solar-sail propelled flight in Earth orbit. October 1, 2010: The
International Solar Sailing Symposium Japan's IKAROS team
stole the show at the International Solar Sailing Symposium in New York City,
where they announced that their spacecraft had achieved controlled solar sail
flight. The meeting was held at the New York College of Technology in Brooklyn,
but I think the IKAROS team should have been given a ticker-tape parade in
lower Manhattan. The timing would have been appropriate, as the meeting started
on July 20, 2010: the 41st anniversary of humankind's first step on the Moon. July 26, 2010: LightSail team learns from IKAROS successes Last week, Bill Nye and I attended the International Solar Sail Symposium
at the New York College of Technology. It was excellent to hear about the
resurgence of solar sail research and development going on world wide; but
stealing the show was the IKAROS team from Japan -- reporting on the first
successful controlled solar sail flight. June 25, 2010: LightSail-1 Passes Critical Design Review LightSail-1, the Planetary Society's new ultra-light Cubesat-based solar
sail spacecraft, has passed its Critical Design Review. At a two-day meeting
in Pasadena, a team -- including JPL project veterans Bud Schurmeier, Glenn
Cunningham, Viktor Kerzhanovich, and Aerospace Corporation's Dave Bearden
-- reviewed the LightSail-1 project from soup to nuts and gave us the thumbs
up to proceed with building the spacecraft's hardware and software. May 27, 2010: Firming Up the Spacecraft Design The LightSail-1 spacecraft development is proceeding well. Our engineering team—led by Jim Cantrell—has completed the preliminary design and made critical decisions to select the hardware and subsystem for the final design—crucial milestones to building the vehicle that will demonstrate the value and potential of using sunlight alone to propel exploratory craft through space. Thanks to
you and your fellow Planetary Society Members, we are well under way with
LightSail-1, the first of our planned series of three flights. The three
missions will be progressively more ambitious, starting in Earth orbit and
moving out into the solar system. by Louis Friedman Sailing on light is the only known method that can take us to the stars. The technology isn’t ready—not now, not in a few years, and probably not in less than a century. But the journey begins now. The Planetary Society is, right now, creating this technology to fly a solar sail. A sail powered by sunlight alone will not be able to reach the stars. Such a trip will require large solar-powered lasers that will beam concentrated light over interstellar distances. But solar sailing—flying on sunlight—will allow us to get around the solar system without fuel and to hover at important places in space, countering the effect of the Sun’s gravity. It will enable us to monitor the Sun and protect Earth, and then to open up the solar system and the way to other solar systems after that. These practical applications will happen much sooner than interstellar travel. November 9, 2009: Planetary Society to Sail Again with LightSail
Washington, D.C. —"We're back!" said Louis Friedman, Executive Director of The Planetary Society. “With an even more ambitious solar sail program than our last venture." The Planetary Society today announced LightSail, a plan to sail a spacecraft on sunlight alone by the end of 2010. The new solar sail project, boosted by a one-million-dollar anonymous donation, was unveiled at an event on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C on the 75th anniversary of the birth of Planetary Society co-founder Carl Sagan, a long-time advocate of solar sailing. Read the full press release » April 1, 2009: New Opportunities June 23, 2008: New Developments on the Road to Cosmos 2 June 15, 2007 : Making Light Work Professional Pilot Magazine asked me to contribute a prediction about the future of flight for the next century. Naturally, I wrote about solar sailing. Writing the article allowed me to step back a bit from our efforts to make this first solar sail flight happen and focus my thoughts on future applications for solar sailing -- uses within our solar system and beyond. The promise of light sails enabling new missions of application and exploration is what motivates The Planetary Society and Cosmos Studios to reach for the stars. October 20, 2006: Monitoring the Sun December 2, 2005: Getting Started September 30, 2005: The End of Cosmos 1; The Beginning of the Next Chapter |
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