A Busy Summer season | The Planetary Society

BACK HOME TO RECHARGE

The testing of LightSail 2 after the vibration testing revealed that all through the 4 months it had been saved, its batteries had dropped in price larger than we would have appreciated. Mild- Sail 2 is designed to work even when it comes out of Prox-1 low on price, nonetheless we’d select the subsequent stage of price. In late October, we flew the spacecraft once more to Cal Poly so we might recharge the batteries at widespread intervals. When a company launch date will get nearer, we’ll excessive off the batteries and fly LightSail 2 once more to AFRL for reintegration with Prox-1 sooner than it is shipped to Florida for integration into the Falcon Heavy rocket.

ARE METAMATERIALS IN SOLAR SAILING’S FUTURE?

Moreover in October, I launched about picture voltaic crusing and the LightSail program at an Optical Society of America (OSA) workshop in Washington, D.C. It launched collectively members of the picture voltaic crusing neighborhood with members of optics and provides communities, notably specialists in metamaterials. Metamaterials on this context are provides that blend and put together completely completely different substances in terribly clever strategies to generate unusual optical properties. Usually laid down as skinny motion pictures (metasurfaces), they’ll actively administration the polarization of transmitted light, actively change diffraction patterns, bend light spherical objects, and set off bodily supplies to bend in response to publicity to light.

Inside the workshop, contributors began the dialogue of how these provides may assist future picture voltaic sails. Ideas included integrating small patches of metamaterials as half of an enormous reflective sail to assist with administration of the orientation of the spacecraft. In the long run, perhaps one might make full sails out of clear diffractive metamaterials. They may in concept regulate the thrust path of the sail with out rotating the sail by adjusting the angle at which light is diffracted by way of the sail.

AWAITING LAUNCH

On the time of this writing, the launch date for the Falcon Heavy on which LightSail 2 will journey stays to be uncertain nonetheless is anticipated to occur in early 2019. For updates on the launch date and to be taught blogs with additional particulars, go to sail.planetary.org.