Tag: LightSail
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LightSail deployment planned for Wednesday
Following the successful resumption of communications with the LightSail spacecraft the mission team are planning to deploy the Solar Sails on Wednesday this week. They were looking to deploy on Tuesday but to ensure everything is working as needed they added an extra day to the plan. The LightSail team will use tomorrow for a…
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LightSail is back
Following a week of silence caused by a software fault on the LightSail spacecraft it started communicating with Earth earlier today. LIGHTSAIL CONTACT! Cal Poly received two beacon packets today during a pass at 5:21 EDT (21:21 UTC). Initial analysis shows reboot occurred. — Jason Davis (@jasonrdavis) May 30, 2015 As the tweet above shows…
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UPDATE – LightSail falls silent
Last week the Planetary Society launched the first privately funded Solar Sail spacecraft as a secondary payload on a Atlas V rocket. During the first couple of days the spacecraft was transmitting data back to Earth during various passes over the ground stations. However the teams have not heard from the spacecraft since, they are…
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LightSail in orbit
The first privately built Solar Sail spacecraft LightSail is now in orbit. Built by the Planetary Society the spacecraft was launched as a secondary payload on the Atlas V that launched earlier today. The successful deployment of the CubeSat was confirmed by the Societies Jason Davies via Twitter. Official #LightSail deployment time: 17:05:40.620, hh:mm:ss.sss (UTC).…
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Atlas V launches military’s X-37B space plane
Following a smooth countdown today United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Atlas V launched the military’s X-37B space plane. The rocket lifted off from SLC-41 and carried the space plane to orbit before deploying it, the rocket also carried a secondary payload of Cubesat’s including The Planetary Societies LightSail test. The Planetary Society is currently raising money…