A team from the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (Marshall), along with a team from the NASA Ames Research Center, developed a solar sail mission called NanoSail-D, which was lost in a launch failure aboard a Falcon 1 rocket on 3 August 2008. The second backup version, NanoSail-D2, also sometimes called simply NanoSail-D, was launched with FASTSAT on a Minotaur IV on November 19, 2010, becoming NASA's first solar sail deployed in low earth orbit. The objectives of the mission were to test sail deployment technologies, and to gather data about the use of solar sails as a simple, "passive" means of de-orbiting dead satellites and space debris. The NanoSail-D structure was made of aluminium and plastic, with the spacecraft massing less than . The sail has about of light-catching surface. After some initial problems with deployment, the solar sail was deployed and over the course of its 240-day mission reportedly produced a "wealth of data" concerning the use of solar sails as passive deorbit devices.
A team from the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (Marshall), along with a team from the NASA Ames Research Center, developed a solar sail mission c?alled NanoSail-D, which was lost in a launch failure aboard a Falcon 1 rocket on 3 August 2008. The second backup version, NanoSail-D2, also sometimes called simply NanoSail-D, was launched with FASTSAT on a Minotaur IV on N!ovember 19, 2010, becoming NASA's first solar sail deployed in low earth orbit. The objectives of the mission were to test sail deployment technologies, and to gather data abo?ut the use of solar sails as a simple, "passive" means of de-orbiting dead satellites and space debris. The NanoSail-D structure was made of aluminium and plastic, with the spacecraft massing less than . The sail has about of light-catching surface. After some initial problems with deployment, the solar sail was deployed and over the course of its 240-day mission reportedly produced a ".w,ealth of data" concerning the use of solar sails as passive deorbit devices.