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One Legacy of Carl Sagan may Take Flight Next Week-A Working Solar Sail:
As early as next Monday night, a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket will launch a cluster of 24 satellites for the US Air Force. Known as the Space Test Program-2 mission, the rocket will deposit its payloads into three different orbits. Perhaps the most intriguing satellite will be dropped off at the second stop—a circular orbit 720km above the Earth's surface. This is the Planetary Society's LightSail 2 spacecraft.
After a week in space, allowing the satellites deposited in this orbit to drift apart, LightSail 2 will eject from its carrying case into open space. About the size of a loaf of bread, the 5-kg satellite will eventually unfurl into a solar sail 4 meters long by 5.6 meters tall. The Mylar material composing the sail is just 4.5 microns thick, or about one-tenth as thick as a human hair.
This experiment, which will attempt to harness the momentum of photons and "sail" through space, is the culmination of decades of work by The Planetary Society. "This goes back to the very beginning, to Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray and Lou Friedman," the organization's chief executive, Bill Nye, told Ars in an interview. "We are carrying on a legacy that has been with us since the founders. It's just an intriguing technology because it lowers the cost of going all over the place in the Solar System."
There were two prior attempts by the Planetary Society at deploying light sails. In 2005, the first stage of the rocket launching Cosmos 1 failed. In 2015, LightSail 1 was able to achieve orbit but experienced several technical difficulties from which lessons were learned and used to inform the design of this upcoming attempt with LightSail 2.
More details about the process can be found at the Planetary Society.
(Score: 3, Informative) by EvilJim on Friday June 21 2019, @12:36AM (6 children)
I would trust him to manage baking soda and vinegar propulsion, but not something like this.
I wonder if so few microns of thickness will have any resilience against micro-meteors? will it be torn to shreds in a few weeks?
(Score: 5, Informative) by datapharmer on Friday June 21 2019, @01:09AM (2 children)
Laugh all you want, but this isn’t his first space experiment. He also worked on the sun dial design used on the mars rovers to calibrate the cameras. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MarsDial [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by EvilJim on Friday June 21 2019, @02:18AM (1 child)
+1 informative to you from me. I'm still going to chuckle like an ass whenever I see his name though.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 21 2019, @05:50PM
I too cannot hear his name without thinking "the science guy", but it does seem like he does do some serious science.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 21 2019, @02:32AM
Keep in mind that he's an engineer, so he's more qualified to work on this than much of what he does.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday June 21 2019, @04:08AM (1 child)
Yes, it will have resilience.
The micro-meteors will pass through letting a hole no larger than their cross-section on impact.
Since they are micro, it will take zillions of them to shred the sail - until that happens, you have a source of impulse that doesn't cost you a cent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Saturday June 22 2019, @12:05AM
if zillions of them pass through the sail, there's a slight chance the payload will be affected :-p
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