A Last Visit With LightSail 2 at the Cubesat Developers Workshop

Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science

The Planetary Society

Science, Technology

4.8 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 15 May 2019

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Mat Kaplan visits Cal Poly San Luis Obispo for a last, clean room visit with LightSail 2, the Planetary Society’s solar sailing cubesat. While there, Mat also talked to attendees at the Cubesat Developers Workshop, including the creator of the tiny “Pocket Rocket” engine for small spacecraft. LightSail2 is now at the Air Force Research Lab for launch preparation, as we hear from Bruce Betts in this week’s What’s Up. You can learn more about this week’s guests and topics at: http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/planetary-radio/show/2019/0515-2019-2019-lightsail2-cubesat-developers.html Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Light sale and other cubes of wonder this week on planetary radio.
0:07.0	Welcome, I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society, with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond.
0:17.0	Happy 20th birthday, CubSats.
0:20.0	The first of you were born in 1999 at Stanford University and on the Hillside
0:26.8	campus of California Polytechnic State University, San Louis Obispo.
0:31.5	Cubes are those tiny spacecraft based on one or more 10
0:36.0	centimeter cubes each of which should not weigh much more than a kilogram.
0:41.0	They started a revolution in the creation of satellites. Even high schools
0:46.1	now have space within their grasp. NASA, the Jet Propulsion Lab, and other major players
0:51.8	are also experimenting with them.
0:53.7	NASA and JPL successfully sent the Marco CubSats on a fly-by-Mars mission accompanying the
1:00.0	Insight Lander. Cal Poly hosts the CubSat developers workshop every year.
1:05.4	Hundreds of CubSat creators and the vendors who work with them spend three days on
1:10.2	campus sharing their projects and pride.
1:13.8	That might have been enough to get me to drive up the California coast in late April, but
1:18.1	there was another reason for me to visit the campus, the Planetary Society's Light Sail 2 CubSAT was about to be shipped off to the Air Force
1:27.0	research lab in preparation for its launch by the next SpaceX Falcon Heavy.
1:32.5	I wanted to have one more look at our baby.
1:35.5	So we've just come through the plastic sheets
1:38.8	into the clean room where LightSill 2 has been living for a good long while now and we are doing this with
1:45.8	John Balardo. John, thank you for the invitation.
1:49.4	Absolutely, you're welcome.
	...

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