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| The Caribbean Sea captured by LightSail 2 on July 7, 2019 |
A few days before the deployment of its large solar sail, the nanosatellite whose goal is to demonstrate the viability of solar navigation has sent us very beautiful images of our blue planet.
The adventure continues for LightSail 2
LightSail 2, the Planetary Society technology demonstrator, is still being tested by the mission team, which is why the deployment of the solar sail has been postponed for a few days and is expected to take effect from 21 July 2019.
The researchers behind this project intend to carry out some additional tests. In particular, they expect new telemetry data to ensure that the machine is in good health before deploying its mylar sail safely. If the flight software has recently been updated, and if the altitude control system could be tested during a full orbit, the LightSail team still wishes to repeat the test to validate the modifications. algorithms brought to its sensors.
High-resolution images
Meanwhile, LightSail has been able to take advantage of the bandwidth available to send us two beautiful shots of the Earth.
On this second sight, captured on July 12, 2019, we can observe the east coast of Mexico. You can also see California Point on the left and Storm Barry on the upper right in the Gulf of Mexico. The Moon is also visible to the right of the image: the Planetary Society explains that it appears with a rectangular shape " because of its phase and the limited number of pixels of the camera. »
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