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The Planetary Society’s Solar Sail Will Hitch a Ride to Space on a Falcon Heavy
The Planetary Society’s LightSail-1 solar sailing spacecraft is scheduled to ride a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket to orbit in 2016 with its parent satellite, Prox-1. Credit: Josh Spradling/The Planetary Society.
In a live webcast, The Planetary Society CEO Bill Nye announced that its long-awaited LightSail solar sail mission will launch to Earth orbit on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy, currently scheduled for an April 2016 liftoff. LightSail-1 and its parent satellite, Prox-1, will be on the same launch vehicle as the U.S. Air Force’s Space Test Program 2 (STP-2) mission. If successful, it will be the first CubeSat to demonstrate controlled solar sailing.
“It’s fantastic that at last we have a launch date for this pioneering mission,” said Nye.
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Read the rest of The Planetary Society’s Solar Sail Will Hitch a Ride to Space on a Falcon Heavy (436 words)
© nancy for Universe Today, 2014. |
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Post tags: LightSail mission, solar sails, The Planetary Society
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Source: http://www.universetoday.com/113116/the-planetary-societys-solar-sail-will-hitch-a-ride-to-space-on-a-falcon-heavy/
