The Planetary Society is Going to Launch a Solar Sail

 Space  

The Planetary Society—a nonprofit composed of space scientists, advocates and enthusiasts will send a miniaturized satellite called a CubeSat into low-Earth orbit on May 20. The LightSail, as it’s called, is propelled by the sun’s energy instead of traditional sources of fuel.

T

he Planetary Society  has already funded its campaign to launch a small spacecraft propelled through space by ultra-thin solar sails.

The private, non-profit organization and its CEO Bill Nye had raised $200,000 on Kickstarter, just a day after they launched their campaign to help fund their LightSail spacecraft.

The small spacecraft is powered by solar sails, designed to capture the momentum from solar energy photons using large, mirrored surfaces. The small, continuous acceleration allows a spacecraft propelled by such sails to reach high speeds over time without carrying or burning any fuel.

The money raised on Kickstarter will cover construction of the spacecraft used in the primary mission, which will launch in 2016.

Altogether, the project is expected to cost $5.46 million. The Planetary Society says it has $1.2 million left to raise.

Now that it has met its initial goal, the group is trying to raise up to $800,000 before June 26 to fund several "stretch" goals:

• - Integration and testing of the spacecraft with the help of the group's partners Ecliptic Enterprises, Georgia Tech, Cal Poly SLO, and Space Science.

• - Covering operations during the four months of the primary mission.

• - Gathering, analyzing and publishing the data with the help of scientific and engineering community.

• - A public awareness and education campaign.

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"I want you to be a part of an epic turning point in space exploration. I invite you to come along on a cosmic journey with me by participating in a mission to sail a spacecraft, a tiny CubeSat no bigger than a breadbox, on beams of light," said Nye in a Facebook post.

Funding backers are being promised rewards such as T-shirts, "ownership" of a square centimeter of the sail and a Raspberry Pi computer installed with software designed to track the spacecraft.

The Planetary Society, which was co-founded by astronomer Carl Sagan, tried to launch the world's first solar sail, Cosmos 1, in 2005, but the launch vehicle failed and it never reached orbit.

NASA also has two upcoming solar sail missions, one to the moon and the other to an asteroid, scheduled for 2018.




SOURCE  CBC

By 33rd Square

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