A Solar Sail Spacecraft Is About to Come Down Through Earth’s Atmosphere in a Fiery Flame

A tiny spacecraft is about to sail into its demise, burning up because it reenters Earth’s environment for the top of its mission.

The Planetary Society’s GentleSail 2 has been getting dragged down by the pull of Earth’s environment, and is predicted to reenter the environment throughout the subsequent few days, the group announced on Monday. When it does, the spacecraft will deplete, bringing its three and a half 12 months journey of orbiting Earth to a fiery finish.

“We always knew this would be the eventual fate for the spacecraft,” The Planetary Society wrote. “Despite the sadness at seeing it go, all those who worked on this project and the 50,000 individual donors who completely funded the LightSail program should reflect on this as a moment of pride.”

GentleSail 2 launched in June 2019, unfurling its 344-square-foot (32-square-meter) photo voltaic sail a month after reaching its orbital publish. The objective of the mission was to check photo voltaic crusing as a method for spacecraft to journey.

Solar sails run on photons from the Sun, inflicting small bursts of momentum that propel the spacecraft. As the photons hit GentleSail’s wings, the spacecraft was pushed additional away from the Sun, reaching increased altitudes. Just two weeks after spreading its wings, GentleSail 2 gained 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) of altitude, making this experiment successful.

The mission has even far exceeded its initial one year timeline, and has been orbiting Earth for 3.5 years, completing 18,000 orbits, and covering 5 million miles (8 million kilometers). But for the past few months, LightSail 2 started losing altitude at an increasing rate.

The spacecraft has been the victim of atmospheric drag, causing LightSail 2 to slow down as it smashed into atmospheric particles during its orbit. The Sun also played a part in LightSail 2’s demise, heating up Earth’s upper atmosphere, and causing it to become denser, which slowed down the spacecraft.

The mission also suffered from communication glitches due to faulty equipment at the ground station. During times of communication drop-off, the team was unable to send data to the spacecraft, causing its sailing to slightly suffer.

After sinking lower through Earth’s atmosphere, the spacecraft will eventually reenter the atmosphere. During reentry, LightSail 2 will be moving so quickly that it will create an energetic pressure wave ahead of it, causing the air around it to heat up and turn the spacecraft into a disintegrating ball of fire.

GentleSail 2 could also be coming to an finish, however the experiment has already impressed a brand new era of spacecraft. Those spacecraft embody NASA’s NEA Scout mission to a near-Earth asteroid (scheduled for launch in August), NASA’s Advanced Composite Solar Sail System to check out sail increase materials in Earth orbit (scheduled for launch someday mid-2022), and NASA’s Solar Cruiser (scheduled for a 2025 launch).

We’ll be looking out for LightSail’s fiery reentry, bidding farewell to the long-running solar sailor.

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