You might also like
EALING: Planetary Society’s solar-powered LightSail spacecraft, which was launched with U.S Air Force’s secret X-37B space plane on May 20, has fallen due to a glitch in its software. Previously, operators of the project confirmed that the spacecraft stopped sending data just a couple of days after its launch.
According to scientists of the LightSail project, the problem could be inside the spacecraft’s Linux-based flight software which stopped the spacecraft from sending the data. According to a blog post by Planetary Society, the glitch would have been caused the automated telemetry chirps of the spacecraft to stop working.
After finding the problem, the engineers tried to reboot the system but they failed. According to them, it wasn’t easy to reboot the system from earth and manual reboot was the only option. The failure foreshadowed a promotional video of LightSail project that was posted in early 2015.
