Source: Solar Sail Success! LightSail 2 Is Officially Soaring on Sunlight | Space After LightSail 2 successfully deployed its solar sail last week, mission managers remotely optimized the craft's orientation. With these small changes, the craft began raising its orbit above our planet, raising its apogee, or orbital high point. Within the past four days, the craft has raised its apogee about 1.2 miles (2 kilometers). The mission team behind the craft confirmed that this orbital raising could be due to nothing other than successful solar sailing, or propulsion from photons, particles that transmit light, from the sun. Astronomers complained about the "Starlink" constellation causing problems for ground based telescopes. Imagine what would happen if solar cell technology became common. In effect, a cloud of aluminized mylar circling the globe. Then there is their space debris potential. Bob Wilson
Back when I first read about solar sails, it sounded so simple. It took longer than I thought, but it's pretty cool to be living in the future we once only dreamed about. I'll leave the nightmare part out of it...
hatred is a strong word, but i am tired of him popping up everywhere i go. it all started 30 years ago when he and ellen degeneres were shilling for exxon at the disney world pavilion
I'm reminded of the near pathological hatred of Elon Musk by Tesla critics. Unable to find credible faults in the Tesla EVs, ~2/3d of all USA sales in July, the critics become the Internet version of a stalker. As for Bill Nye, he isn't on my short list as most of what he discusses I know already. A former engineer, Bill explains things for the unsophisticated . . . who sometimes resent it. But the solar sail predates Bill. Johannes Kepler observed that comet tails point away from the Sun and suggested that the Sun caused the effect. In a letter to Galileo in 1610, he wrote, "Provide ships or sails adapted to the heavenly breezes, and there will be some who will brave even that void." He might have had the comet tail phenomenon in mind when he wrote those words, although his publications on comet tails came several years later.[3] James Clerk Maxwell, in 1861–1864, published his theory of electromagnetic fields and radiation, which shows that light has momentum and thus can exert pressure on objects. Maxwell's equations provide the theoretical foundation for sailing with light pressure. So by 1864, the physics community and beyond knew sunlight carried momentum that would exert a pressure on objects. . . . I'm just glad to see a demonstration, solar sail in orbit and achieving higher higher orbital altitudes. Bob Wilson
@ sails: The world needs more sails and solar panels. Space can use more of them too. It will be interesting to see if this can scale up to perhaps a slow boat to Artemis. I'm not an engineer, but I'm thinking that once you get out past Mars you're going to be in the doldrums. @ Nye. Meh... The unsophisticated need their heroes too, I guess. It's like people who turn to comedy shows on cable TV for....news. @ Musk. "Slightly" less stable than Edison but every bit as accomplished, although Edison DID enjoy his "little" publicity stunts too! Topsy (elephant) - Wikipedia Edisonian morals.
Has anyone been tracking its orbital elements to see if the semi-major axis has increased? Or are the sponsors even making this claim at all? The skeptic in me doesn't want to see only the apogee increase, as this doesn't really increase the real orbital altitude. The articles do disclose that the perigee is falling, though don't say how fast. If perigee drops faster than apogee rises, it really means that the satellite is actually descending, not climbing, while the eccentricity is being increased by whatever perturbation mechanism, reducing the orbit's angular momentum. The orbit is clearly not undergoing normal changes, and a closer look could well demonstrate that this is a perfectly reasonable marker of the sails actually working as claimed. Just beware that on the surface of it, a shrinking semi-major orbital axis opens the door and rolls out a red carpet to skeptics. A rising element would be a much more robust demonstration.
I found this source: LightSail 2 Spacecraft Successfully Demonstrates Flight by Light | The Planetary Society Apparently they are reducing the perigee to support de-orbiting. Bob Wilson
