NASA’s Deploys First Solar Sail

NanoSail-d Assembly Team

NASA has announced that they have completed the first successful deployment of a 100 square-foot solar sail in low earth orbit. The announcement was posted on the space agency’s web site on Friday, but the actual deployment occurred on Thursday at 10PM EST.

The solar sail, a nanosatellite dubbed NanoSail-D, is a proof of concept test. Engineers expect that, over the next 70 to 120 days of its expected life span, it will successfully demonstrate the technology which allows for the deployment of a compact solar boom in space. Once proven, this could lead to further advances in the use of solar sails as a propulsion method for space probes.

The probe itself can be tracked from earth by a small radio beacon. In fact, according to NASA, the signal was first confirmed by the Marshall Amateur Radio Club, not by the space agency itself. Like many innovations in pioneering space exploration, NASA welcomes the public to track and follow the progress of this mission. NASA has released the radio frequency for anyone interested (437.270 MHz) and also has a web site link dedicated to tracking the satellite at http://nanosaild.engr.scu.edu/dashboard.htm.