Bill Nye’s Solar-Powered Space-Sailer Has Woken Up

For the last few week since its launching , the experimental LightSail satellite has been orbit Earth , unable to make background touch thanks to a software bug . But earlier today , the space vehicle ’s handlers successfully deployed the little craft ’s gigantic sail .

Motor is running ! Sail is Deploying ! ! ! 39 year after Prof. Sagan spoke of it !

— Bill Nye ( @BillNye)June 7 , 2015

LightSail is an data-based project , funded by The Planetary Society , a non - government organization founded by Carl Sagan in 1980 , presently boasting our planet ’s very own Science Guy as CEO . LightSail is a project aimed at test the technical and economic benefits of solar sails , which use sunlight to prompt themselves through the vacuum of space .

The LightSail craft that ’s presently in celestial orbit is too humiliated to let for actual sailing , since the satellite will be caught in atmospheric puff . rather , it ’s meant to prove things like deployment and communications , in planning for a full mission next year .

Solar sail technology is n’t particularly unexampled , having already been test by the Americans and Japanese . What LightSail is promising , though , is low - budget space exploration . The LightSail craft is made up of CubeSats , bantam satellites weighing about three pound each . LightSail has three of those , and a Brobdingnagian Mylar canvass covering 344 square feet . That make it gaudy — $ 4.5 million for the whole delegation .

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