Success! NanoSail-D Deploys

By Nancy Atkinson - January 21, 2011 at 3:36 PM UTC | Space Exploration

We have a solar sail!

As we reported on the 19th,

the little cubesat that was thought to be lost has now been found, and now today, Friday, Jan. 21, engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center confirmed that the NanoSail-D deployed its 100-square-foot polymer solar sail in low-Earth orbit and is operating as planned. The sail actually deployed late on Jan. 20, and it was quite interesting to see how ham radio operators were helping the engineers monitor the critical beacons sent out by the spacecraft -- with communications also being sent back and forth via Twitter. The video above is from Henk Hamoen (@PA3GUO on Twitter) who operates a ham radio station in the Netherlands. The NanoSail-D sends an beacon packet every 10 seconds, which contains data about the spacecraft systems operation, and Hamoen and others were able to help make sure things were going as planned.

"This is tremendous news and the first time NASA has deployed a solar sail in low-Earth orbit," said Dean Alhorn, NanoSail-D principal investigator. "To get to this point is an incredible accomplishment for our small team and I can't thank the amateur ham operator community enough for their help in tracking NanoSail-D. Their assistance was invaluable. In particular, the Marshall Amateur Radio Club was the very first to hear the radio beacon. It was exciting!"

NanoSail-D will continue to send out beacon signals until the onboard batteries run out. For ham radio buggs: the beacon can be found at 437.270 MHz. It can be tracked on the NanoSail-D dashboard at: http://nanosaild.engr.scu.edu/dashboard.htm.

It is estimated that NanoSail-D will remain in low-Earth orbit between 70 and 120 days, depending on atmospheric conditions.

NanoSail-D is designed to demonstrate deployment of a compact solar sail boom technology. This is the first successful solar sail deployment in low Earth Orbit, and the second such deployment in less than a year;

Japan's IKAROS set sail in June 2010 for Venus.

Follow the

NanoSail-D mission operation on Twitter

Happy sailing!

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com