Another day-in-the-life

On Monday, May 23, engineers will command LightSail 2 through its day-in-the-life test, which simulates all critical functions of the spacecraft's mission. The test will take place at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo on California's central coast.

"We learned a remarkable amount from the test flight of LightSail 1," said Dave Spencer, the team's project manager who also serves as the principal investigator for LightSail's partner spacecraft, Prox-1. "In addition to validating the approach for sail deployment, we documented a number of lessons learned regarding the spacecraft subsystems that we are addressing for LightSail 2. The key advancement for the LightSail 2 mission is the ability to control the orientation of the solar sail and shape the orbit by harnessing solar radiation pressure."

Monday's test will be the first opportunity to see how all of the enhancements made after the LightSail 1 mission work in a full, simulated mission environment. Individual spacecraft components have already been tested, but during the day-in-the-life test, the engineering team will largely be hands-off as the spacecraft cycles through its automated software sequences.

At about 10:30 a.m. PDT, LightSail 2 will be powered on inside a Cal Poly clean room, simulating the moment it is ejected from Prox-1. After a timed delay, the spacecraft's antenna will deploy and begin transmitting telemetry.

Telemetry will be received over-the-air by Cal Poly's ground station—the same system that will communicate with LightSail 2 in space. One year ago, Cal Poly received the first two telemetry packets from LightSail 1 as it zipped overhead on its first orbit around the Earth.