Lightsail 2 Solar Sailing Project Work at Purdue

Purdue University professor, David Spencer is leading an effort to send a CubeSat up for an attempted controlled solar sailing in Earth’s orbit. Solar sailing uses reflective sails to harness the momentum of sunlight for propulsion. Full story: bit.ly/2zByJM2
This project is sponsored by the citizen-funded Planetary Society, whose CEO is Bill Nye the Science Guy.
The CubeSat, LightSail 2, is one payload as part of the Air Force’s Space Test Program-2 (STP-2) mission that will launch on the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket in early 2019. Spencer’s research team will be tracking LightSail 2, receiving the signal from the spacecraft as well as commanding the spacecraft during operations, from the Space Flight Projects Lab at the Purdue Technology Center. engineering.purdue.edu/SFPL
Featured Purdue Researchers:
David Spencer, Associate Professor, School of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Justin Mansell, Graduate Research Assistant , School of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Video Credits:
Lightsail 1 and Lightsail 2 video provided by Planetary Society www.planetary.org/explore/proj...
Solar storm video from NASA Goddard • NASA’s 4K View of Apri...
Music: "Wasted Briatin" by Scott Holmes via freemusicarchive.org
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#purdue #lightsail #planetarysociety

[@profounddamas]

First a space raft (Apollo 11) now a space sail. Yeah I think we are on the right track for deep space exploration, like say higher orbit? To me real space exploration and real space ships are something like you already past pluto and you remember you forgot you glasses and come back to earth to get you glasses and resume the mission without any issues whatsoever. That's real capability in space exploration.

[@paulharland7280]

I wonder if solar sail craft could get a boost by traveling along the gravitational focal lines where the light of distant stars would be concentrated by gravitational lensing.

[@rodneytrynor7374]

Something like this? iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1086/312015/fulltext/985903.text.html

[@rodneytrynor7374]

Or this? medium.com/@uncertainquark/gravity-assists-explained-simply-how-the-voyager-spacecrafts-escaped-the-solar-system-d8aaa4a9273c

[@rodneytrynor7374]

What size rocket motor would be needed? Would you need an O motor or smaller? czcams.com/video/Rpj4B23tbhg/video.html