NASA's NanoSail-D Completes Mission: 240 days

NASA nanosatellite that deployed the agency's first-ever solar sail in low-Earth orbit has successfully completed its Earth Orbiting Mission.

The NanoSail-D, which was launched on Nov. 19, 2010 as a payload on NASA's FASTSAT, has completed more than 240 days "sailing" around the Earth to demonstrate and test the deorbiting capabilities of a large low mass high surface area sail.

"The NanoSail-D mission produced a wealth of data that will be useful in understanding how these types of passive deorbit devices react to the upper atmosphere," said Joe Casas, FASTSAT project scientist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

View a Flickr Slideshow of NanoSail-D

Casas added that the data collected from the mission is being evaluated in relation to data from FASTSAT science experiments which are intended to better understand the drag influences of Earth's upper atmosphere on satellite orbital re-entry.

The FASTSAT science experiments are led by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. and sponsored by the Department of Defense Space Experiments Review Board which is supported by the Department of Defense Space Test Program.

According to the space agency's initial assessment, NanoSail-D exhibited the predicted cyclical deorbit rate behavior that was only previously theorized by researchers.

"The final rate of descent depended on the nature of solar activity, the density of the atmosphere surrounding NanoSail-D and the angle of the sail to the orbital track," said Dean Alhorn, principal investigator for NanoSail-D at Marshall Space Flight Center.

"It is astounding to see how the satellite reacted to the sun's solar pressure. The recent solar flares increased the drag and brought the nanosatellite back home quickly."