Bill Nye’s LightSail spacecraft reboots and gets in touch with Earth

Josh Spradling / The Planetary Society

Bill Nye’s sunbeam-powered spacecraft caused quite a scare for him and his company Planetary Society when it lost the ability to send information back to earth. LightSail got cut off from communications a week after it launched on May 20^th due to a software glitch. They couldn’t get it to reboot remotely and so the engineers put their hope in the “natural reboot” that would happen when it collides with stray charged particles. Thankfully, that happened and they re-established connection with the spacecraft.

LightSail was inspired by Carl Sagan’s solar sailing idea, which imagines a spacecraft using the sun in the same way a sailboat uses the wind. This month’s test hopes to prove it can unfurl it sails. If successful, a second test run will happen in April next year. LightSail is built with a small satellite and four Mylar sails to ride solar radiation. The scientists hope to prove that solar propulsion can get rid of the need for boosters or fuel reserves in spaceflight.

Source: The Verge

First Vine from outer space shows the Earth’s orbit

While Astronaut Mike Massinimo was the first person to tweet from space in 2009, there is a new social media first coming all the way from outer space. Astronaut Reid Wiseman has sent the first Vine video from space showing the Earth’s orbit in six seconds. Wiseman explained in the caption that the sun does not set on this 90-minute orbit because the International Space Station travels along the terminator line, which is the border between darkness and light on the face of the earth. It is still quite a sight though.

Source: Gizmodo