You can download audio files of the morse code beacon below, and even use them as a ringtone for your phone!

LightSail 2 Morse code beacon, sample (WAV format)

LightSail 2 Morse code beacon, sample (M4R format)

LightSail 2 Morse code beacon, actual as recorded by Justin Foley (WAV format)

LightSail 2 Morse code beacon, actual as recorded by Justin Foley (M4R format)

Other solar sails

Japan’s IKAROS spacecraft, launched to interplanetary space with Venus-bound Akatsuki in 2010, was the first and only spacecraft to have demonstrated controlled solar sailing as a sole method of propulsion.

LightSail 2, which began development in 2009, will demonstrate the technology for CubeSats. CubeSats have revolutionized the space industry thanks to low-cost technology miniaturization, but often lack a means of propulsion. Weighing 60 times less than IKAROS but sporting a sail just 6 times smaller, LightSail 2 will demonstrate that CubeSats can carry solar sails with enough punch for orbital maneuvers, and still have room for science instruments.

We currently don't have plans for a follow-on mission, but The Planetary Society is already helping advance solar sail technology through a Space Act Agreement with NASA. The agency is launching a CubeSat called NEA Scout on the first flight of the Space Launch System to lunar orbit. NEA Scout will use its solar sail to leave the Moon and visit a near-Earth asteroid. NASA is also studying a mission called Solar Cruiser that would survey the Sun from a difficult-to-access polar orbit, using a 1,670-square-meter solar sail for propulsion.

Solar sails are also one of the only known methods that could someday be used to travel to the stars. In 2016, the group Breakthrough Initiatives announced an initiative to send a fleet of laser-powered solar sails to our nearest star, Alpha Centauri.

Project history