The LightSail 2 latest: mission updates, pictures and more
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At LightSail 2’s altitude above Earth — currently about 687 kilometers — there is still enough atmosphere to counteract the thrust gained from solar sailing and slowly pull it back toward Earth. The spacecraft will eventually succumb to drag and reenter Earth’s atmosphere.
Thanks to optimized sail pointing over time, altitude decay rates during recent months have been the best of the entire mission. Thrust even occasionally overcame atmospheric drag, slightly raising the spacecraft’s orbit.
Additionally, below-average Sun activity has kept Earth’s upper atmosphere thin for much of the mission, creating less drag on the sail.
That has recently changed, with the Sun becoming more active and emitting significant solar flares. The LightSail 2 team believes that this activity is likely now causing higher orbital decay rates than those seen earlier in the mission.
Orbital decay modeling by Hugo Favila, a mechanical engineer and operations intern at The Planetary Society through the Zed Factor Fellowship, working with the LightSail 2 operations team, indicates that the spacecraft may stay in orbit for at least another year. This prediction, based upon matching models to the decay seen so far, has a lot of uncertainty, in part because it assumes no changes in major factors such as LightSail 2 staying healthy and atmospheric density staying the same.
There are signs that the spacecraft’s solar sail may be starting to degrade, although the extent is under study. The mission team will continue to track and analyze the sail’s condition, as the data could prove valuable to other solar sail missions. LightSail 2 monitors its sails using two fish-eye cameras mounted at the end of two solar panels.
Almost 30 months after liftoff, the mission continues to impress. For now, LightSail 2 will keep teaching the world about solar sailing, returning inspiring images and helping prepare for the next generation of solar sail missions.
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