LightSail awakes! Experimental spaceship opens solar sails

This video, captured by observers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, tracks LightSail as it flies across the sky on June 8 following solar sail deployment. Courtesy: The Planetary Society

Tuesday, June 9, 2015, 2:53 PM - Update: After more passes of LightSail over the ground stations, controllers were able to download images taken by the spacecraft's cameras, one of which is shown below.

After enduring excruciating bouts of silence as their tiny spacecraft orbited the Earth, the Planetary Society's is now celebrating the successful deployment of their LightSail-1 mission's solar sails.

Carl Sagan's dream of taking solar sailing from science fiction to science fact has taken another step towards fulfillment, thanks to Bill Nye and The Planetary Society, with their dedication and patience with the tiny spacecraft they launched into orbit just a few weeks ago.

On Sunday, June 7, at just before 4 p.m. ET, the ground crew ordered LightSail-1 to deploy its solar sails. Shortly thereafter, they were rewarded with confirmation that the spacecraft's boom motor had whirred to life, extending the sail booms and unfurling the sails.

Image taken by one of the two cameras on board LightSail-1. Credit: The Planetary Society

The above image, snapped by one of the cameras LightSail-1 carried into space, was taken after the spacecraft's solar sails deployed, but as Planetary Society senior editor and planetary evangelist Emily Lackdawalla said over social media, the sails had not completely deployed at this time.

WATCH BELOW: The Planetary Society team, along with Bill Nye over teleconference, react to the news of LightSail's success.

The numbers that the team are getting so excited about in the above video is the count of LightSail's "motor spins" - the number of times that its boom motor has made one revolution. A count of 18,000 spins confirmed that the booms were extending, and would be fully extended, with sails unfurled, at a total count of 134,000 spins.

As Bill Nye says in the video, the flight of LightSail-1 has been like a rollercoaster ride. After the initial elation at the May 20 launch, putting this test flight into orbit, the mission ran into trouble not once, but twice.

First, after only two days in orbit, LightSail-1 fell silent, the victim of a computer glitch that caused its computer to crash. Repeated attempts to signal the spacecraft to reboot failed, but then over 8 days later, ground stations suddenly picked up its signal. The only explanation was that the spacecraft had encountered a cosmic ray particle, which forced the computer to shutdown and reboot - something that apparently happens to nearly every orbiting satellite at some point within the first two weeks in space.

After quickly assesses whether LightSail-1 could continue, the team moved up the scheduled deployment of its solar panels to July 3, and deployment of its solar sails to July 5. However, just a day after it successfully extended its solar panels, the spacecraft again fell silent. This time, the problem was blamed on the battery. The teams watched each pass of LightSail-1, waiting for any contact, ready to send the solar sail deployment command as soon as they received the spacecraft's signal again and its battery levels were stable.

Contact resumed on Saturday afternoon, and by Sunday they were confident that battery levels were right for deployment. The "Go" command was sent, and they've now been rewarded with a successful test of the mission's systems.

As the above Twitter exchange mentions, LightSail-1 is a test mission - a flight specifically designed to ensure the design of the spacecraft works properly. The real mission launch is scheduled to launch sometime in 2016.

The problems the team endured on this flight were, no doubt, stressful, however the data LightSail-1 provided will be invaluable for the real thing next year.

Congrats to both Bill Nye and the entire Planetary Society team!

Source: The Planetary Society