It's Alive! It's Alive!

It was once thought lost in space, but it looks like NanoSail-D has ejected from its FastSat carrier and is preparing for deployment.

We just pulled this off the Nanosail-D Twitter:

"Hello all! Checking in!  I will open my sail this evening at 02:55 UTC or 9:55pm EST over Ireland.  You know the luck o' the Irish helped."

The Nanosail team is asking ham radio operators for help in tracking the spacecraft. If you're a ham, the tweets say "Use 437.270MHz as the center frequency.  Talk to you soon ....."

Fingers crossed for a successful sail deployment.