Among the numerous spacecraft and satellites ascending to house on Monday’s Falcon Heavy launch, the Planetary Society’s LightSail 2 would be the most fascinating. If all goes nicely, per week from launch it will likely be shifting by house — slowly, however absolutely — on nothing greater than the pressure exerted on it by daylight.
LightSail 2 doesn’t have solar-powered engines, or use photo voltaic vitality or warmth for some secondary function; it would actually be propelled by the bodily pressure of photons hitting its immense shiny sail. Not photo voltaic wind, thoughts you — that’s a distinct factor altogether.
It’s an thought, defined Planetary Society CEO and acknowledged Science Guy Bill Nye stated in a press name forward of the launch, that goes again centuries.
“It really goes back to the 1600’s,” he stated; Kepler deduced {that a} pressure from the solar should trigger comet tails and different results, and “he speculated that brave people would one day sail the void.”
So they may, since newer astronomers and engineers have contemplated the chance extra critically.
“I was introduced to this in the 1970s, in the disco era. I was in Carl Sagan’s astronomy class… wow, 42 years ago, and he talked about solar sailing,” Nye recalled. “I joined the Planetary Society when it was formed in 1980, and we’ve been talking about solar sails around here ever since then. It’s really a romantic notion that has tremendous practical applications; There are just a few missions that solar sails are absolutely ideal for.”
Those would primarily be long-term, medium-orbit missions the place a craft wants to remain in an Earth-like orbit, however nonetheless get somewhat distance away from the house planet — or, sooner or later, long-distance missions the place gradual and regular acceleration from the solar or a laser could be extra sensible than one other propulsion methodology.
Mission profile
The eagle-eyed amongst you might have noticed the “2” within the identify of the mission. LightSail 2 is certainly the second of its kind; the primary launched in 2015, however was not deliberate to be something greater than an check deployment that might fritter away after per week or so.
That mission had some hiccups, with the sail not deploying to its full extent and a pc glitch compromising communications with the craft. It was not meant to fly through photo voltaic crusing, and didn’t.
“We sent the CubeSat up, we checked out the radio, the communications, the overall electronics, and we deployed the sail and we got a picture of that deployed sail in space,” stated COO Jennifer Vaughn. “That was purely a deployment test; no solar sailing took place.”
The spacecraft itself, minus the sail, in fact.
But it paved the way in which for its successor, which can try this fantastical type of transportation. Other craft have carried out so, most notably JAXA’s IKAROS mission to Venus, which was fairly a bit bigger, although as LightSail 2’s creators identified, not almost as environment friendly as their craft, and had a really totally different mission.
The model new spacecraft, loaded right into a 3U CubeSat enclosure — that’s in regards to the measurement of a loaf of bread — is piggybacking on an Air Force payload going as much as an altitude of about 720 kilometers. There it would detach and float freely for per week to get away from the remainder of the payloads being launched.
Once it’s safely by itself, it would hearth out from its provider craft and start to unfurl the sail. From that loaf-sized package deal will emerge an expanse of reflective mylar with an space of 32 sq. meters — in regards to the measurement of a boxing ring.
Inside the spacecraft’s physique can be what’s known as a response wheel, which may be spun up or slowed down with a purpose to impart the alternative pressure on the craft, inflicting it to vary its angle in house. By this methodology LightSail 2 will regularly orient itself in order that the photons placing it propel it within the desired course, nudging it into the specified orbit.
1 HP (housefly energy) engine
The thrust produced, the group defined, may be very small — as you may count on. Photons don’t have any mass, however they do (in some way) have momentum. Not so much, to make certain, but it surely’s larger than zero, and that’s what counts.
“In terms of the amount of force that solar pressure is going to exert on us, it’s on the micronewton level,” stated LightSail venture supervisor Dave Spencer. “It’s very tiny compared to chemical propulsion, very small even compared to electric propulsion. But the key for solar sailing is that it’s always there.”
“I have many numbers that I love,” lower in Nye, and detailed certainly one of them: “It’s nine micronewtons per square meter. So if you have 32 square meters you get about a hundred micronewtons. It doesn’t sound like much, but as Dave points out, it’s continuous. Once a rocket engine stops, when it runs out of fuel, it’s done. But a solar sail gets a continuous push day and night. Wait…” (He then argued with himself about whether or not it will expertise night time — it would, as you see within the picture beneath.)
Bruce Betts, chief scientist for LightSail, chimed in as nicely to make the numbers a bit extra relatable: “The total force on the sail is approximately equal to the weight of a house fly on your hand on Earth.”
Yet should you added one other fly each second for hours at a time, fairly quickly you’ve acquired a extremely appreciable quantity of acceleration occurring. This mission is supposed to seek out out whether or not we will seize that pressure.
“We’re very excited about this launch,” stated Nye, “because we’re going to get to a high enough altitude to get away from the atmosphere, far enough that we’ll really gonna be able to build orbital energy and take some, I hope, inspiring pictures.”
Second craft, similar (largely) because the final
The Lightsail going up this week has some enhancements over the past one, although total it’s largely the identical — and a comparatively easy, cheap craft at that, the group famous. Crowdfunding and donations over the past decade have offered fairly a bit of money to pursue this venture, but it surely nonetheless is simply a small fraction of what NASA might need spent on an identical mission, Spencer identified.
“This mission is going to be much more robust than the previous LightSail 1, but as we said previously, it’s done by a small team,” he stated. “We’ve had a very small budget relative to our NASA counterparts, probably 1/20th of the budget that a similar NASA mission would have. It’s a low cost spacecraft.”
Annotated picture of LightSail 2 courtesy of Planetary Society.
But the enhancements are particularly meant to deal with the principle issues encountered by LightSail 2’s predecessor.
Firstly, the pc inside has been upgraded to be extra strong (although not radiation-hardened) and given the flexibility to sense faults and reboot if essential — they received’t have to attend, as they did for LightSail 1, for a random cosmic ray to strike the pc and trigger a “natural reboot.” (Yes, actually.)
The deployment of the sail itself has additionally improved. The earlier one solely prolonged to about 90 p.c of its full width and couldn’t be adjusted after the actual fact. Subsequently checks have been carried out, Betts instructed me, to precisely decide what number of revolutions the motor should make to increase the sail to 100 p.c. Not solely that, however they’ve put markings on the extending booms or rods that may assist double examine how deployment has gone.
“We also have the capability on orbit, if it looks like it’s not fully extended, we can extend it a little bit more,” he stated.
Once it’s all on the market, it’s uncharted territory. No one has tried to do this type of mission, even IKAROS, which had a completely totally different flight profile. The group is hoping their sensors and software program are as much as the duty — and it must be clear whether or not that’s the case inside a couple of hours of unfurling the sail.
It’s nonetheless primarily an experiment, in fact, and what the group learns from this they are going to put into any future LightSail mission they try, but in addition share it with the spaceflight neighborhood and others trying to sail on daylight.
“We all know each other and we all share information,” stated Nye. “And it really is — I’ve said it as much as I can — it’s really exciting to be flying this thing at last. It’s almost 2020 and we’ve been talking about it for, well, for 40 years. It’s very, very cool.”
LightSail 2 will launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy no ahead of June 24th. Keep an eye fixed on the positioning for the newest information and a hyperlink to the livestream when it’s virtually time for takeoff.