Solar sail spaceship "light sail" successfully deployed the sun in space



The experimental aircraft of the solar sail spacecraft launched recently by the planetary association "Light sail A"Succeeded in the test mission of deploying sun sails in a low orbit orbit. This mission is the first step towards "complete solar sail navigation" conducted only in 2016. Currently, we are seeking investment with Kickstarter for the future, we have already stretch goals that we have already set as our original goal of 200,000 dollars (about 24.6 million yen) and further set 450,000 dollars (about 55.4 million yen) Beyond, we aim for a new goal of 1 million dollars (about 122 million yen).

LightSail | The Planetary Society
http://sail.planetary.org/


LightSail: A Revolutionary Solar Sailing Spacecraft by Bill Nye, CEO, The Planetary Society - Kickstarter
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/theplanetarysociety/lightsail-a-revolutionary-solar-sailing-spacecraft/

The solar sail spacecraft is a spacecraft that is also called "space yacht" "sun ship", reflecting the light and ions emitted from the sun and stars by a huge "sail" using thin-film mirrors to change thrust. The idea about solar sail was not so new, and the idea was from over 100 years ago. In the following movie, in the "The Tonight Show" broadcasted in 1976, an astronomer and a founder of the "Planetary Society" founderKarl SaganI can see how he is talking about solar sails.

LightSail Then and Now - YouTube


The Planetary Society has been working toward realization of this solar sail spacecraft for a long time, and in 2005 we invested 4 million dollars (about 450 million yen)Cosmos 1We launched, but failed due to a rocket failure. After that, the plan leading to the current "Light Sail No. 1" began to move.

The project aims to "carry out a full-scale solar sail navigation in the fall of 2016" and launched "Light Sail A" which is an experimental machine from Cape Canaveral Air Force Base on 20 May 2015. Although the launch itself succeeded, a software problem occurred two days after the launch and it became impossible to develop solar sails. However, the communication recovered on May 31, and on June 3 the solar panels first expanded. Even though communications ceased again, we successfully communicated again on June 6, and finally succeeded in deploying solar sails.

This is the appearance of light sail A which developed solar sail

This means that the last milestone for Light Sail No. 1 has been reached and the Planetary Society will aim for full-fledged solar sail navigation at Light Sail No. 1 in 2016.

However, the funds of this plan are currently covered by membership fee and private expenses of members. So, it seems that we decided to invite Kickstarter for investment.

The list you can get when you invested in Kickstarter is like this. Some are already filled with frames. Deadline for investment is 21:54 on Friday, June 26.
· 1 dollar (about 123 yen): update information that only investors can see + right to have names launched into space
· $ 5 (about 614 yen): Contents of 1 dollar + Donator's digital badge + Newsletter
· $ 15 (about 1842 yen): contents of $ 5 + pin badge
· $ 20 (about 2456 yen): contents of $ 5 + patch
· $ 35 (about 4298 yen): contents of $ 5 + select pin badge or patch + 'Centimeter of sail' new membership (1 year)
· $ 50 (about 6139 yen): contents of $ 5 + "Centimeter of sail" new membership (1 year) + official T-shirt
· $ 100 (about 12,300 yen): Contents of $ 5 + 'Centimeter of sail' New membership (1 year) + limited edition poster


In Japan, too, efforts on solar sail spacecraft have been done, and since the launch of "Cosmos 1" has failed, the world's first successful solar sail navigation was launched in 2010IKAROSWell.

JAXA | Cosmic Yacht sailing under the sun's light
http://www.jaxa.jp/article/special/explore/mori01_j.html

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in Science,   Video, Posted by logc_nt