- Nineteen prisoners use cutlery to break out of cells at Winchester prison
- France wants progress in Ukraine before Russia returns to G7
- Italy president begins talks to seek way out of government crisis
- Italian PM expected to resign as political chaos deepens
- Russia says US cruise missile test ‘regrettable’
- Kremlin - No date set for Normandy talks on Ukraine despite Macron meeting
- Egypt court hands out 6 death sentences on terror charges
- Putin says Russian nuclear explosion poses no threat
- Russian panel eyes alleged foreign interference in protests
- Gran Canaria wildfire triggers evacuation of thousands of people
- PM Johnson calls on Germany and France to compromise on Brexit
- Sudan's ex-president Bashir arrives at corruption trial
TEHRAN, Jul 23 -LightSail 2, a CubeSat developed by the Planetary Society, is preparing to deploy its solar sails. The miniature satellite, roughly the size of a toaster, will unfurl its sails at approximately 8:22 a.m. ET on Tuesday.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) -The Planetary Society will offer live streaming coverage of the milestone, broadcasting mission control at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in California.
Last week, mission engineers sent LightSail 2 the signal to go into solar sailing mode. The probe made a series of turns in to and out of the stream of photons radiating from the sun. Once the satellite's sail are deployed, these turns will raise and lower its orbit.
"Even at an altitude of 720 kilometers, the spacecraft's boxing ring-sized solar sail creates atmospheric drag, which limits the time LightSail 2 can raise its orbit to about 1 month," the Planet Society wrote in a blog update. "As one side of its orbit raises, the other side will dip lower into the atmosphere until drag overcomes the force from solar sailing. Therefore, it is essential that the spacecraft's attitude control system is functioning as expected prior to sail deployment."
The Planetary Society designed the CubeSat to test solar sailing technology. The use of solar sails to convert solar wind into thrust could help spacecraft conserve fuel on long-distance missions.
As LightSail 2 readied for this week's sail deployment, the probe found time to snap several new photographs of Earth and send them back to mission control.
Source: upi
Your Comment