Light sail 2 deploys sail.

[KingClinton]

https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&u ... 9RsJ9tJmgw

[GCoyote]

Excellent news!

[helicon]

This is great Clinton. If successful it will prove the viability of solar sails. I'm going to look into the potential velocity of the sails, didn't see it mentioned in the article. I also recall from the 1980's a scheme to power an interstellar spacecraft with a giant mylar sail and a giant laser beam positioned on earth or the moon to "propel" the spacecraft. The theory was that about 10% of lightspeed would be attainable, or 42 years to reach proxima centauri. Don't know about the condition of the hypothetical "crew" as it would eat up 40+ years of their lives so they wouldn't arrive at PC until they were in their mid sixties at the earliest. Hopefully they would be able to retain good relationships in the confined space. An unknown caveat is the impact of cosmic rays on the sail and even more troublesome on the craft itself, which might cause premature cancers which the crew might not be able to treat without access to medical care.

[KingClinton]

Some more info.

https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&u ... 6RFmfmNMfg

[Lady Fraktor]

I wonder if anyone has spotted/ imaged it yet.

[AntennaGuy]

I once had the honor of researching/analyzing design options for a solar sail-carried antenna (to be used to support communications) for a different solar sail project. What really struck me about the overall program was how very very large the sail needed to be, while at the same time, how very very small its total mass had to be, the latter including that of any payload (such as my antenna, RF electronics, control systems, etc.) The engineering constraints were extreme, to say the least. Much as I enjoy dreaming about the possibilities (and beauty) of solar sails traversing the heavens, I am not confident they will ever perform practical missions better than alternative propellant-using spacecraft. But I guess time will tell.