UPDATED 4:26 p.m. ET

Nothing has been easy for the small, relatively cheap LightSail spacecraft, which is the first in a series of at least two such satellites that will fulfill a vision the famous science educator Carl Sagan had in the 1970s, about surfing through space on the energy of the sun.

On Sunday, the LightSail spacecraft, failed its first attempt at unfurling its basketball-court-sized sail, but succeeded during a small, second window of opportunity that had lower odds of succeeding. This came after the spacecraft went dark twice, only to be revived in both instances.

By design, once the sail deploys, LightSail won't have much time left in orbit. The prototype spacecraft will fall out of orbit not long after its sail deploys. Because of its slow orbit speed, the sail will create drag in Earth's upper atmosphere, forcing the craft to fall back to Earth soon after it starts sailing.

Bill Nye, better known as science educator "Bill Nye the Science Guy," is the current head of the Planetary Society, which Sagan co-founded, and now claims to be the largest private space-advocacy organization.

"We’ve learned a lot about perseverance on this test mission. Although it’s in inertial space, LightSail has had me on a rollercoaster," Nye said in a press release Sunday evening. "We are advancing space science and exploration. This mission is part of our mission.”

Three beautiful lines of telemetry: 78: Motor_Current_Position =67029 (50%) 79: Camera_0_onOff=1 (on) 80: Camera_1_onOff=1 (on) #LightSail — Jason Davis (@jasonrdavis) June 7, 2015

To recap: LightSail deployment motor activated! Counts showed sail booms continuing to extend before spacecraft moved out of range. — Jason Davis (@jasonrdavis) June 7, 2015

The first command that ground controllers gave to LightSail on Sunday afternoon at 2:02 p.m. ET did not succeed in getting the desired response from the satellite. But the success marked a huge turnabout from 24 hours before that, when the spacecraft was dark, with less than spectacular odds that controllers would be able to wake it up at all. The second try began at 3:47 p.m. ET, when the satellite was over the Baja Peninsula, according to the Planetary Society's blog.

Based on data available, team concludes LightSail did not deploy its solar sails. Command was sent, but no indication it was received. — Jason Davis (@jasonrdavis) June 7, 2015

The team is now regrouping before the final overflight of the day to consider options. That pass begins at 3:42 pm EDT. #LightSail — Jason Davis (@jasonrdavis) June 7, 2015

The small satellite checked in with ground controllers at 2:21 p.m. ET on Saturday for the first time since an outage began on Wednesday afternoon, according to Jason Davis of the Planetary Society. Since that first check-in, the satellite has been reporting its position to ground controllers as it was designed to do. The most recent glitch was the second time the spacecraft went silent since its launch on May 20.

The second outage may have occurred because the spacecraft's batteries were not charging properly despite the unfurling of its solar panels. Now, though, it appears to be charging normally, Davis wrote on the Planetary Society's website.

Davis said the organization's engineers had a "leading theory" that the spacecraft was stuck in a "loop" where power levels were too low in the Earth's shadow, but too high in direct sunlight. "This power ping-pong could have prevented the batteries from reattaching their circuits to the spacecraft, and allowing normal operations to resume," he wrote.

The LightSail prototype comes equipped with a large Mylar sail that is the size of a basketball court, and is currently tucked inside the craft. Once unfurled, this sail should allow the craft to use the sun's radiation to propel through space, a cheap form of propulsion that could one day bring small satellites to deep space destinations like Mars or the moon.

Ground controllers hope to download a full resolution image of the deployed lightsail early on Monday morning.

A few awesome LightSail memes have made their way to my inbox. Enjoy. pic.twitter.com/mEFGa3qNcd — Jason Davis (@jasonrdavis) June 7, 2015

The first radio silence began on May 22, two days after launch, and it moved up the timeline for mission managers, who decided to try to deploy its sail manually instead of waiting 28 days after launch for an automatic deployment as originally expected.

Mission controllers were actually planning to deploy the spacecraft's large solar sail on Friday, but the most recent glitch delayed that milestone further.

Regardless of the fate of this mission, the Planetary Society is planning to launch another full-scale LightSail mission sometime next year. That LightSail will be placed into a higher orbit where it can surf on the sun's rays for a longer period.

Nye and the society have launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise money to fund the second LightSail mission. At the time of this writing, the organization had raised close to $815,000.