New Photos From LightSail 2
MAY 6, 2020 BY EVAN GOUGH
Ten months in space!
The Planetary Society’s LightSail 2 spacecraft just reached that milestone. And the fine folks at the Society have released a bunch of new pictures from the spacecraft. Ten of them, in fact. One for each successful month.
LightSail 2 is a technology demonstration mission for the most part. And it’s been successful so far. In January 2020, the Planetary Society released a paper outlining the mission results. In brief, LightSail 2’s solar sails are working, though the spacecraft is still expected to fall to Earth within a year of launch.
The spacecraft carries cameras, of course. Those cameras are there primarily to check on the solar sails. But while doing that, they’re capturing some delicious photos of Earth in the background.
Note: the camera has a fish-eye lens, making the sail appear a little curved in the pictures.
More:
https://www.universetoday.com/145959/new-photos-from-lightsail-2/#more-145959
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Despite "Star Trek" and other science-fiction, human travel outside of the solar system seems impossible to me. A collision with even a speck of dust at high speeds -- so it wouldn't take tens of thousands of years just to reach the closest other star system -- would be disastrous.
Small, unmanned light-sails are feasible, though!