POV

-There's the spacecraft over there. And you say, "That's it?" Yeah, that's it. It's that big. It's literally smaller than a loaf of bread.

Indistinct conversations

They're all very hopeful. This is an important day in testing the spacecraft to do turn it on and see if it does everything it's supposed to do. The LightSail spacecraft will go there in the middle. The antenna will spring out, and the sails will deploy if nothing goes wrong.

Indistinct conversations

That's where we're gonna start it. All right. You ready? -I'm ready. -Okay, stand back. -Five, four, three, two, one. Zero.

Spacecraft hums

-Oh, man. Right there. Hey, you guys. I'm really glad it works. Whoo-hoo-hoo-hoo! Oh, that's great. That's really great, you guys. That's really nice. It's working perfectly.

Cheers and applause

So, the reason we're doing this is to advance space science. There's just a few missions that a solar sail is ideal for. We could monitor the Earth's climate sort of indefinitely, and that would be a worthy use of these inexpensive, lightweight spacecraft. So, next year, we are launching a solar sail into space. And I'm quite anxious about it. The Planetary Society launched a solar sail in 2005, and the result was catastrophic. -After Carl's death, I was the program director for Cosmos 1, which would be the very first attempt to launch a solar sail into space. -We launched it on a Russian Cold War ballistic missile in the Arctic Ocean.

Explosion

Everybody was sort of gathering around, listening for information updates. It was, well, we're waiting for a signal. No, there was no signal. -And word came that our tracking seemed to indicate that it was off course. -And it crashed. And it's in the bottom of the ocean.