TORONTO — On Wednesday, a rocket carrying a mysterious space plane launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. On board the rocket was an experiment that NASA hopes to one day use to propel its spacecraft.
One of the extra payloads was The Planetary Society’s LightSail satellite.
READ MORE: European Space Agency spaceplane successfully returns to Earth
LightSail is a privately funded solar sail mission. But the sail isn’t propelled by wind — not even solar wind. Instead, it’s powered by sunlight.
What’s important about this type of technology is its relative cheap cost. Rather than require a lot of heavy fuel to launch a satellite or spacecraft into orbit, the Mylar sails — which unfurl from storage when ready — are light and cheap. Each sail is only 4.5 microns thick — about one-fourth the thickness of a garbage bag.
Though called LightSail, this mission isn’t really about sailing at all, but testing the deployment of the sails.
A second mission is planned for 2016.
Early beginnings
The idea of a solar sail isn’t a new one. In fact, it’s very old.
About 400 years ago, German astronomer Johannes Kepler looked at the tails of comets and believed that a solar breeze was responsible. He thought that some day we could sail through the stars much as we sail across oceans.
He had the right idea insomuch as using the sun.
But in 1873, James Clerk Maxwell demonstrated that sunlight actually exerts a small amount of force as photons (small particles of light) bounce off a reflective surface. Soon the idea of using large reflective sails to collect that light and propel something through space was born.
Several uses of this type of propulsion have been used over the years by the U.S., Russia and Japan.
The American Mariner 10, a spacecraft destined for Mercury in 1974, used this method almost by accident. The spacecraft ran low on fuel and scientists had the idea of turning the reflective solar arrays toward the sun. Their idea worked.
LightSail is in its testing phase as part of a CubeSat mission. These are research spacecraft that are called nanosatellites, small spacecraft that piggyback on rockets used for larger missions. They are just 10 cm per side but can be stacked together. In this case, LightSail is a three-unit CubeSat.
This isn’t The Planetary Society’s first attempt to get a solar sail into space. In 2005, it tried to hitch a ride on board a Russian rocket. However, due to a rocket failure it never reached orbit.
This test will provide valuable data for NASA to possibly use on future exploration missions as secondary payloads.
LightSail reached orbit safely on Wednesday. Its solar sails will be deployed on June 17.
When they are unfurled it may be possible to see it from Earth. Stay tuned.
Full disclosure: Nicole Mortillaro is a member of The Planetary Society
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