Day: August 2, 2019

LightSail 2 is a Success

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The Planetary Society

❝ The Planetary Society has declared “mission success” on LightSail 2, its crowdfunded solar sailing CubeSat traveling around the planet. While LightSail 2 successfully unfurled its sail last week, it has now raised its orbit solely through the power of sunlight…

❝ “For The Planetary Society, this moment has been decades in the making,” said Planetary Society CEO Bill Nye. “Carl Sagan talked about solar sailing when I was in his class in 1977. But the idea goes back at least to 1607, when Johannes Kepler noticed that comet tails must be created by energy from the sun. The LightSail 2 mission is a game-changer for spaceflight and advancing space exploration.”

A dream no longer deferred.

Ocean of plastic

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❝ Globally, public awareness is growing about the harm being done by plastic, which hurts marine life and instead of biodegrading breaks down into ubiquitous micro-plastics. According to science writer Mike Berners-Lee, of the 9 billion tons of plastic ever produced, 5.4 billion has been dumped onto land or into the sea — enough to shrink-wrap the entire planet.

Please RTFA. Look at these photos. Heartbreaking to an old geek like me who grew up subsistence fishing the New England coast.