LightSail teams declares success in solar sail experiment

The gentle push of sunlight is slowly changing the orbit of the Planetary Society’s crowd-funded LightSail 2 satellite after it unfurled a thin solar sail the size of a boxing ring last week, officials confirmed Wednesday. LightSail 2 is the capstone of a decade-long, $7 million effort to advance the science of solar sailing, a technique that could allow small probes to travel across the solar system, or to other stars, at faster speeds and lower cost. More

(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Aug 3)