After years of computer simulations, calculations and ground tests, what seemed like an impossible and absurd idea has now become a reality, with it bringing many new possibilities and future projects that could change our lives forever.
An artist's concept of LightSail 2 above Earth
On July 23. 2019 after the nail-biting two and a half minute take-off the Planetary Society — led by science communicator Bill Nye — successfully launched a satellite called LightSail 2 into orbit, where it then unfurled a 344-square-foot solar sail.
The launch of SolarSail 2 was indeed a revolutionary flight with it being much more ambitious than its predecessors in terms of changing and manipulating the solar sail into their advantage. The sail itself is made of lightweight reflective material that’s just 1/5,000th of an inch thick and supplied with two fisheye cameras that together provide a 360-degree (even though a little distorted) view of the sail and its surroundings.
Launch of LightSail 2
Within days of launching the spacecraft and after a few tweeks of the LightSail 2, the team began to conduct the next phase of their project- manipulating the movement and orientation of the spacecraft using only the solar energy gathered by the solar sail. To prove their ability to do this they started slowly raising its orbit around the Earth. Soon enough they accomplished their primary goal of achieving flight by light- the spacecraft has raised its orbital high point, or apogee, by about 2 kilometers which the mission team confirmed can only be attributed to solar sailing.
"For The Planetary Society, this moment has been decades in the making. Carl Sagan talked about solar sailing when I was in his class in 1977. But the idea goes back at least to 1607, when Johannes Kepler noticed that comet tails must be created by energy from the Sun. The LightSail 2 mission is a game-changer for spaceflight and advancing space exploration." - Planetary Society CEO Bill Nye
A spacecraft that utilizes a solar sail in this way has an almost unlimited supply of energy. Advancing this type of propulsion technology could one day help spacecraft reach nearby star systems that aren't currently accessible due to the finite amount of fuel we can launch off the planet.
The world as we know it is changing rapidly and with new technological advancement such as this one and many more that are to come in the following years, who knows what kind of future is in store for the human race.
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