8 replies to this topic

[scottmm2012]

Hmmmm....

http://www.planetary...jUARCEghFAv42qk

 

Last sentence of the article:
 

LightSail 2 may be visible to the naked eye after solar sail deployment. Once the sails are out, we will post a dashboard at sail.planetary.org offering pass predictions for your location.

 

[t_image]

Lightsail 1 lasted less than one month and had a whole bunch of problems. It was saved by a lucky cosmic ray strike.

 

Other kickstarter shiny things also failed:

http://www.arrl.org/...-deploying-sail

 

https://www.dailymai...ploy-orbit.html

 

 

 

 

 

The big event will be the successful SpaceX heavy rocket upper stage delivery.

[CounterWeight]

Interesting, thanks for posting in about this. I'm a bit skeptical about it but you never know ?  Watching the boosters land will be amazing (at least to me) and impressive.

[BillP]

For me no big deal that it might be visible in the night time sky.  Reason is that this is not some stupid art project or appreciation endeavor.  Instead it is a proof-of-concept mission to see if sails can be used for controlled propulsion of CubeSats.  The mission is designed so as not to be able to overcome atmospheric drag so at most it will last 6 months.  This is actually a useful crowdsourced project.

[ilovecomets]

As a long time Planetary Society member I’m very excited for tomorrow night’s launch.  Here’s hoping for a successful launch and mission.

[CounterWeight]

Just read this this morning, sounds like off to a good start.  LINK

[PXR-5]

Also a long time Planetary Society member I also have been closely following this I even have the T shirt

[CounterWeight]

Has anyone downloaded the 'dashboard' to look at the mission activity?  I have not done so, but it sounds interesting like the mars weather conx from NASA, to me it's great they are putting up these public portals.

 

I just followed one link and it's great what they have up on the web, at leas I feel a nice presentation.  If I understand correctly they are going to unfurl the sail in the next day or two.

Edited by CounterWeight, 07 July 2019 - 09:20 PM.

[CounterWeight]

Came across this while checking for any news, the team will wait for sail deployment until further testing is completed, any issues straightened out, and now sail deployment forecast for the 21st.  LINK