在紧张的几天之后，比尔·奈的阳光动力飞船“光帆”又与地球接触了。在5月20日发射一周后，由于软件故障，LightSail失去了向船员发送数据的能力。远程重启飞船的努力失败了，因此工程师们希望LightSail能够执行“自然重启”，如果飞船与杂散的带电粒子相撞，就会发生这种情况。

在昨天通过他的公司行星协会发布的一份声明中，奈说这正是发生的事情：

Our LightSail called home! It’s alive! Our LightSail spacecraft has rebooted itself, just as our engineers predicted. Everyone is delighted. We were ready for three more weeks of anxiety. In this meantime, the team has coded a software patch ready to upload. After we are confident in the data packets regarding our orbit, we will make decisi*** about uploading the patch and deploying our sails— and we’ll make those decisi*** very soon. This has been a rollercoaster for us down here on Earth, all the while our capable little spacecraft has been on orbit going about its business. In the coming two days, we will have more news, and I am hopeful now that it will be very good.

LightSail的灵感来源于Carl Sagan的太阳能航行理念，该理念设想了一艘飞船利用太阳的方式，类似于帆船利用风的方式。这艘飞船由一颗小型卫星组成，卫星上连接着四个聚酯薄膜帆，使光帆能够驾驭太阳辐射。本月的试飞希望证明LightSail能够成功地展开帆。如果试验成功，计划明年4月进行第二次飞行。该项目的科学家们希望证明，太阳能推进可以消除太空飞行中对助推器或燃料储备的需求。

更正，美国东部时间5月31日下午1点26分：这篇文章的早期版本将比尔·奈的公司命名为行星集团。实际上是行星社会。