Cornell Lightsail Experiment Paves the Way for Interstellar Missions

Cornell University's Space System Design Studio (SDSS) successfully deployed two lightsail experiments, Alpha CubeSat and Sailing to the Stars, from the International Space Station (ISS). The experiments were part of the Museum of Science Fiction’s 2016 CubeSat Competition and funded by NASA's CubeSat Launch Initiative. Both missions were launched in late 2025 aboard the NG-23 and Crew-11 missions, respectively. Alpha CubeSat and Sailing to the Stars consisted of origami-style lightsails and chip satellites (ChipSat) that were folded for launch and unfurled upon deployment. During deployment, communications were established through the open-source global satellite network TinyGS. Sailing to the Stars tested the performance of AlphaCube and five other lightsails, including NRCSD-29, which deployed from the ISS on December 2nd, 2025. Until AlphaCube burned up in Earth's atmosphere, the CubeSat confirmed a successful deployment and carried out several secondary technology demonstrations, including a magnetorquer-only spin-stabilization algorithm, a full test of the lightsail's avionics, the first flight of a RockBLOCK Iridium modem, a fully 3D-printed chassis, and the first holographic-image message plaques sent to space.

• Alpha CubeSat and Sailing to the Stars were deployed from the ISS in late 2025.
• Alpha CubeSat was the first spacecraft of its size to transmit complete data packets from orbit to ground.
• Sailing to the Stars tested the performance of AlphaCube and five other lightsails, including NRCSD-29.
• The experiments were funded by NASA's CubeSat Launch Initiative and part of the Museum of Science Fiction’s 2016 CubeSat Competition.
• The missions confirmed successful deployment and carried out several technology demonstrations, including a magnetorquer-only spin-stabilization algorithm and a RockBLOCK Iridium modem.

These results will inform future CubeSat and lightsail demonstrations that test associated technologies, such as steering, orbit-raising, and laser propulsion. The concepts of lightsails, directed-energy propulsion (DEP), and gram-scale spacecraft (the aforementioned ChipSats) have become of considerable interest in the past decade. Notable examples include Breakthrough Starshot, Project Lyra, and Swarming Proxima Centauri, all of which hope to leverage lightsails as a means of sending missions to nearby stars, enable rapid-transit missions to Mars and the outer Solar System, and catch up with interstellar objects (ISOs).

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