lightsail
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LightSail 2 Has Burned Up in Earth’s Atmosphere After 3.5 Years in Space
After three-and-a-half years of sailing above Earth, the LightSail 2 spacecraft has burnt its shiny metallic wings as it reentered Earth’s atmosphere in a fiery blaze.
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NASA Moves Ahead With Wild Solar Sail Concept
A project to develop diffractive solar sails has advanced to the third and final phase of NASA’s advanced concepts program. The team behind the project now has two years to further develop this unconventional means of space propulsion.
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Here’s Proof That The LightSail Satellite Has Unfurled Properly
Over the weekend, the LightSail satellite unfurled its gigantic solar sail to help propel it through space. Now, the first images to be beamed back from the satellite prove that it’s really up and running.
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Carl Sagan’s Solar Sail Is Ready For Its First Test Flight
“There’s just a tremendously exciting prospect called solar sailing. [It] travels on the radiation and particles that come out of the sun, the wind from the sun. Because it has a constant acceleration, it can get you around the inner part of the solar system a lot faster…than the usual sorts of rocket propulsion.”