NASA to Hoist Its Sail: Solar Sail Mission Gets Ready for Launch
A NASA mission testing a new way of navigating our solar system is ready to hoist its sail into space – not to catch the wind,
the propulsive power of sunlight. The Advanced Composite Solar Sail System is targeting launch on Tuesday, April 23
Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket will deploy the mission’s CubeSat about 600 miles above Earth – more than twice the altitude of the International Space Station
To test the performance of NASA’s Advanced Composite Solar Sail System, the spacecraft must be in a high enough orbit for the tiny force of sunlight on the sail
which will last about two months and includes subsystems checkout, the microwave oven-sized CubeSat will deploy its reflective solar sail.
The weeks-long test consists of a series of pointing maneuvers to demonstrate orbit raising and lowering, using only the pressure of sunlight acting on the sail.
Stay tuned for updates as NASA’s Advanced Composite Solar Sail System sets out to prove its ability to sail across space
NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley manages the project and designed and built the onboard camera diagnostic system
NASA’s Langley Research Center in Langley, Virginia, designed and built the deployable composite booms and solar sail system.