LightSail 2: A Year of Solar Sailing
Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science
The Planetary Society
4.8 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 17 June 2020
⏱️ 52 minutes
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Summary
The LightSail 2 team and 50,000 supporters around the world will celebrate the little spacecraft’s first anniversary on orbit in a few days. Planetary Society Chief Operating Officer Jennifer Vaughn remembers the long road to this accomplishment. LightSail Program Manager Bruce Betts and LightSail Project Manager Dave Spencer tell us what we’ve learned over the last year and look to the future of solar sailing. Dave also reveals his exciting new job at the Jet Propulsion Lab. Learn more at https://www.planetary.org/multimedia/planetary-radio/show/2020/0617-2020-light-sail-2-betts-spencer-vaughn.html
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | LightSail 2 reaches one year in space this week on planetary radio. |
| 0:09.0 | Welcome, I'm at Kaplan of the Planetary Society with more of the human adventure across our solar |
| 0:15.7 | system and beyond. |
| 0:17.8 | That's right, the Earth has made one full revolution around the Sun since the society's little cube sat with 32 |
| 0:24.8 | square meters of mylar sails rocketed into orbit aboard a roaring Falcon heavy. |
| 0:30.7 | We'll look back with Planetary Society Chief Operating Officer Jennifer |
| 0:35.4 | Vaughn and then get the Mission Status and Outlook from Light Sale Program |
| 0:39.9 | Manager Bruce Betts and Lightale 2 Project Manager Dave Spencer. |
| 0:45.0 | Dave also has some very special news about his own work that he'll share. |
| 0:49.5 | Bruce will stay with us for this week's What's Up trek across the night sky and a new space trivia |
| 0:54.6 | contest. |
| 0:56.2 | My favorite image in the latest edition of The Down Lake might be hard to decipher without |
| 1:02.0 | a caption. |
| 1:02.6 | Bunny-suited technicians are reaching up to a matrix of brass-colored cylinders. |
| 1:08.2 | Over their heads is a complex piece of technology that would be unrecognizable to many, at least from this angle, what |
| 1:15.5 | we're watching is members of the Perseverance Mars rover team installing sample tubes |
| 1:21.6 | in the belly of the rover. |
| 1:23.0 | Someday, those very tubes filled with Martian soil |
| 1:27.0 | will be returned to the great labs back here on Earth, |
| 1:31.0 | and the dream of Mars sample return will have been realized. |
| 1:35.1 | NASA says crew dragon astronauts Bob Benkin and Doug Hurley are likely to make the |
| 1:39.3 | International Space Station their home till at least August and possibly longer. The extra hands are |
... |
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