page_title: LightSail
section_title: LightSail 1
hierarchical_section_title: LightSail / LightSail 1
caption_attribution_description: English: LightSail 1 captured this image of its deployed solar sails in Earth orbit on 8 June 2015. LightSail's cameras are fisheye lenses with a 185-degree field of view, which distort the shape of the sails and make them look curved in this image.
context_page_description: LightSail is a project to demonstrate controlled solar sailing within low Earth orbit using a CubeSat. The project was developed by The Planetary Society, a global non-profit organization devoted to space exploration. It consists of two spacecraft—LightSail 1 and LightSail 2. LightSail 1 was an engineering demonstration mission designed to test its new sail deployment method in space, it did not perform solar sailing. LightSail 2 is a fully functional spacecraft intended to demonstrate true solar sailing and incorporates the lessons learned from LightSail 1. LightSail is a follow-on project to Cosmos 1—a solar-sail spacecraft designed by The Planetary Society in the early 2000s, which was destroyed during a launch failure in 2005.
  Both LightSail spacecraft measure 10 cm × 10 cm × 30 cm in their stowed configuration. After sail deployment, the total area of each spacecraft is 32 square meters.
context_section_description: A preliminary technology demonstrator spacecraft, LightSail 1 (formerly LightSail-A), was launched as a secondary payload aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket at 15:05 UTC on 20 May 2015 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. The mission delivered the satellite to an orbit where atmospheric drag was greater than the force exerted by solar radiation pressure.
  Two days after the launch, however, the spacecraft suffered a software malfunction, which made it unable to deploy the solar sail or to communicate. On 31 May 2015, The Planetary Society reported having regained contact with LightSail 1. After the solar panels were deployed on 3 June 2015, communications with the spacecraft were lost once more on 4 June. In this case, a fault with the battery system was suspected. Contact was then reestablished on 6 June, and the sail deployment was initiated on 7 June. At a conference on 10 June 2015, after photos of deployment were downloaded, the test flight was declared a success. The spacecraft reentered the atmosphere on 14 June 2015, ending the test flight.
caption: LightSail 1 with deployed solar sails, 8 June 2015
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image ExifOffset": "38", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1600", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1200"}