LightSail 2, Planetary Society solar sail mission |
LightSail 2, Planetary Society solar sail mission |
Jun 24 2019, 02:49 AM
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#1
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Merciless Robot Group: Admin Posts: 8785 Joined: 8-December 05 From: Los Angeles Member No.: 602 |
We are now just over 24 hours away from the beginning of the launch window for the third Falcon 9 Heavy from Kennedy Space Center, which among other payloads wlll carry The Planetary Society's LightSail 2 spacecraft. We'll talk about it here.
GO LIGHTSAIL!!! GO TPS!!! -------------------- A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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Jun 25 2019, 09:11 PM
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#2
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Merciless Robot Group: Admin Posts: 8785 Joined: 8-December 05 From: Los Angeles Member No.: 602 |
Well, it made it into orbit & apparently sail deployment will occur in about a week.
-------------------- A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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Jul 3 2019, 01:45 AM
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#3
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Merciless Robot Group: Admin Posts: 8785 Joined: 8-December 05 From: Los Angeles Member No.: 602 |
The spacecraft has successfully separated from its host Prox-1 and has downlinked. Full story and details of future events here.
-------------------- A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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Jul 7 2019, 09:48 PM
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#4
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Merciless Robot Group: Admin Posts: 8785 Joined: 8-December 05 From: Los Angeles Member No.: 602 |
Panel (and panel-mounted camera) deployment occurred on Friday evening US Pacific time. Images and status update here.
-------------------- A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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Jul 24 2019, 11:08 PM
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#5
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Member Group: Members Posts: 866 Joined: 15-March 05 From: Santa Cruz, CA Member No.: 196 |
i remember the efforts to get this going in the 90s, its been such a long time coming, but finally here it is!
they put together a cool gif anim of the unfurling sails images look much better than i expected, all raw images are here |
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Jul 25 2019, 12:46 AM
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#6
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Merciless Robot Group: Admin Posts: 8785 Joined: 8-December 05 From: Los Angeles Member No.: 602 |
Truly a triumph for citizen science and the realization of a dream long held. Congratulations to the LightSail team!!!
-------------------- A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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Jul 25 2019, 02:37 AM
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#7
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2106 Joined: 13-February 10 From: Ontario Member No.: 5221 |
Lovely views! I still remember the disappointment with Cosmos 1; glad to see there are more reliable launchers these days!
Now to look forward to Lightsail being spotted from the ground... |
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Guest_Steve5304_* |
Jul 25 2019, 04:25 PM
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#8
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Guests |
Lovely views! I still remember the disappointment with Cosmos 1; glad to see there are more reliable launchers these days! Now to look forward to Lightsail being spotted from the ground... Me also!! I am more excited to see what sort of data they gather. They have speculated for hundreds of years about this sort of thing. Bring on the data!!! |
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Jul 25 2019, 05:03 PM
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#9
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Administrator Group: Admin Posts: 5172 Joined: 4-August 05 From: Pasadena, CA, USA, Earth Member No.: 454 |
i remember the efforts to get this going in the 90s, its been such a long time coming, but finally here it is! they put together a cool gif anim of the unfurling sails images look much better than i expected, all raw images are here Thanks, that gif is mine Please have fun with the image data! The pictures are a lot better than I expected, too. I'm curious to see creative approaches to dealing with the bizarre wide-angle camera distortion. My approach is simply to enlarge the original photo by a factor of 5 or so, then apply the Photoshop geometric correction filter at its maximum level multiple times, then downsize to 2x original resolution. I don't find that sharpening the resulting image helps much, but I suspect I'm just not picking the right set of parameters. -------------------- My website - My Patreon - @elakdawalla on Twitter - Please support unmannedspaceflight.com by donating here.
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