Bill Nye's LightSail spacecraft wakes up, unfurls on second attempt

The small satellite checked in with ground controllers at 2:21 p.m. ET on Saturday for the first time since an outage began on Wednesday afternoon, according to Jason Davis of the Planetary Society.
Davis said the organization's engineers had a "leading theory" that the spacecraft was stuck in a "loop" where power levels were too low in the Earth's shadow, but too high in direct sunlight.
The LightSail prototype comes equipped with a large Mylar sail that is the size of a basketball court that is tucked inside the craft. Once unfurled, this sail should allow the craft to use the sun's radiation to propel through space, a cheap form of propulsion that could one day bring small satellites to deep space destinations like Mars or the moon.