LightSail 2 Demonstrates Flight by Light

From August 15, 2019, ARRL Newsletter:

The Planetary Society's crowdfunded LightSail 2 spacecraft is successfully raising its orbit solely on the power of sunlight. Since unfurling the spacecraft's solar sail on July 23, mission managers have been optimizing the way the spacecraft orients itself during solar sailing. After a few tweaks, LightSail 2 began raising its orbital apogee, something the mission team said demonstrated the mission's primary LightSail 2 launched on June 25, and it deployed on July 2 from Prox-1, a Georgia Tech student-built spacecraft the size of a small washing machine. 

Using the Experimental License call sign WM9XPA, LightSail 2 automatically transmits a beacon packet on 437.025 MHz (9,600 bps FSK) every few seconds, which can be decoded into 238 lines of text telemetry describing the spacecraft's health and status -- everything from battery status to solar sail deployment motor state.goal of "flight by light for CubeSats." Continuing to sail on sunlight in Earth orbit, the spacecraft's orbital apogee hit 729 kilometers (approximately 452 miles) as of August 5, an increase of 3.2 kilometers (nearly 2 miles) since sail deployment.

Every 45 seconds, the spacecraft transmits "LS2" in CW on 437.025 MHz. More information is on The Planetary Society website. -- Thanks to The Planetary Society

LightSail 2's aluminized Mylar sail shines against the blackness of space, with the Sun peeking through near a sail boom. [Photo courtesy of The Planetary Society]

LightSail 2 Hamsat to transmit Morse code from space

Posted by Jason Davis to the Planetary Society blog at http://www.planetary.org/blogs/jason-davis/2016/20160609-lightsail-2-morse-code.html

 

During last year's LightSail 1 mission, dozens of radio enthusiasts around the wrote in to tell us they heard our solar sailing CubeSat chattering away in low-Earth orbit.

Every few seconds, LightSail automatically transmits a beacon packet. These packets can be picked up by ground stations and decoded into 238 lines of text telemetry that describe the spacecraft's health and status. Everything from battery current to solar sail deployment motor state is included. We still plan to better support the worldwide radio community's efforts to help us capture those packets; that work is temporarily on the back burner while the engineering team focuses on getting the spacecraft ready for delivery.

 

Many off-the-shelf CubeSat software packages also have an option to transmit Morse code beacons, and for the LightSail 2 mission, we're activating this feature. Every 45 seconds, the spacecraft will transmit "L-S-2," and radio operators tuned in to the spacecraft's 437.325 megahertz frequency should be able to hear it.

In Morse code, L-S-2 looks like this:

 

.-.. / ... / ..---

 

If you capture the beacon using software-defined radio, it looks like this:

Justin Foley / The Planetary Society

LightSail 2 Morse code beacon (.-.. / ... / ..---)