The solar sailing mission is now marking three years of space flight, but is unlikely to celebrate its fourth anniversary.
Planetary society LightSail 2 is a mass-funded solar sail launched on June 25, 2019. It was expected to take a year to assess how well a spacecraft could operate using only power Sun.
Now tripling that expectation, the spacecraft continues to work well but struggles with atmospheric resistance. Molecules Earth’s atmosphere they are slowly pulling the spacecraft back to our planet, and a re-entry is expected in perhaps a few months, according to the Planetary Society Update (opens in new tab).
“We continued to work to learn more and sail more efficiently as part of its expanded mission, including the second year in orbit, as well as this past, third year,” Bruce Betts, the mission’s project manager, wrote on Friday (June 24th) at the website of the Planetary Society.
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Like any long-term mission, the spacecraft faced several challenges. Last summer, engineers recalibrated gyroscopes on the spacecraft to take drift into account, but the gyroscopes “began to return data that measured inaccurate rotational speeds,” Betts wrote.
“We have developed gyroscope calibration techniques in orbit and updated in-flight flight software to allow for adjustments to gyroscope bias parameters. The update has improved our sail control, thus improving our solar sailing.”
The change has allowed the altitude to rise by 328 feet (100 meters) per day for several months, but as of today, the average altitude is about 390 miles (627 kilometers). That’s compared to 446 miles (718 km) at the start of the mission.
Altitude has fallen for several reasons, Betts explained, including problems communicating with the spacecraft due to breakage of earth station components (and requiring replacement), constant atmospheric resistance, and increased activity in the 11-year-old solar cycle inflating the Earth’s atmosphere and moving more molecules more.
However, the Mylar sail material remains in good condition and the spacecraft has no major component failures, which Betts said is “incredible proof to many dozens of people over the years who have worked on it.”
He added that the team plans to “get the most out of the next few months” before the final re-entry of LightSail 2, but the data collected will remain useful in essence forever after the mission. The team plans a number of mission analyzes, paper publications and conference publications for LightSail, as well as continuing to connect with other space missions that plan to use solar sails.
Meanwhile, the LightSail team continues to post updates technical publications (opens in new tab) and, while the mission is active, you can see the key parameters through mission control dashboard (opens in new tab).
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