We had communication challenges with the spacecraft, in part due to ground station components breaking and having to be replaced.
There are three main reasons for the steep drop-off in altitude in the last few months. As of this writing, its average altitude is about 627 kilometers (about 390 miles), down from about 718 kilometers (roughly 446 miles) at the start of the mission. During its third year, despite the good summer, LightSail 2 has dropped about 67 kilometers (roughly 42 miles). You can see this easily in the plot of altitude versus time.įor reference, in the first year of the mission, we dropped about 10 kilometers (about 6 miles), and in the second year about 14 kilometers (about 9 miles). Altitude began dropping fast and on average it has continued to drop faster and faster since then. You can see this in the plot of average altitude with time as an upward trend in the altitude line during those months.Īlas, the beautiful summer transitioned quickly to a cold, cold winter.
The result was many days where we actually raised the altitude by tens to even over 100 meters (about 328 feet) per day.
MASS EFFECT 2 MISSIONS UPDATE
The update improved our sail control, thus improving our solar sailing.
MASS EFFECT 2 MISSIONS SOFTWARE
We developed techniques to calibrate the gyros on orbit, and updated the onboard flight software to enable corrections to the gyro bias parameters. If the measurements are correct, the software on board can successfully utilize torque rods, basically electromagnets, to push against the Earth’s magnetic field to take out undesired spin.īut the gyros began returning data that measured incorrect spin rates. The gyroscopes, or gyros for short, measure the spin rate around different axes. Very occasionally we would actually gain a few meters of altitude.ĭuring the glorious summer of ‘21, we recalibrated the gyroscopes on the spacecraft to account for drift we discovered. When it was in solar sailing mode following its planned strategy during the first months of the mission, we would lose on average 19 meters per day compared to 34 meters per day when we were not in solar sailing mode. Throughout most of the first two years of the mission, LightSail 2 would lose a few to several tens of meters per day on average. Our solar sailing efficiency improved into early September, and we had our most successful sailing of the entire mission as measured by the change in average orbital altitude. It was a very fruitful (northern) summer in 2021.
When it comes to the last year and the spacecraft’s orbital altitude, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. The good, the bad, and the ugly of orbital altitude during this last year as part of their FUTURES exhibit. We’ve even had a quarter-scale model of LightSail 2 with a deployed sail and other LightSail 2 items on display in the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. We also continue to share what we’ve learned with members and the public through all of our media channels including this week’s update on Planetary Radio, and also through technical publications and conferences. These include involving and exciting our members and the general public in space exploration, and demonstrating and raising the awareness of solar sailing as a viable potential propulsion technique within the technical community as well as outside of it. We also have achieved LightSail 2’s other goals which we continue to improve upon. We have continued to work to learn more and sail more efficiently as part of its extended mission including its second year in orbit as well as this last year, its third year, which we will focus on here. Early in the mission, LightSail 2 achieved its major technical goal, becoming the first small spacecraft to demonstrate controlled solar sailing, using only sunlight reflecting off the sail as propulsion to change its orbit.
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