Solar sailing spacecraft

I wrote this up as a comment in another subreddit and thought some people might find it interesting.

Notable missions utilizing solar sails:

PAST:

• IKAROS, a JAXA interplanetary probe, uses a 1883 sq ft solar sail as its primary mode of propulsion. It was launched in 2010 on a Venus fly-by mission which it completed successfully. It is still operational and in its extended mission.

• NanoSail-D2 was a NASA experimental cubesat designed to test solar sail deployment and the concept of de-orbiting spacecraft using solar sails. It had a 110 sq ft solar sail and also launched in 2010.

• LightSail 1 was a Planetary Society cubesat based on the NanoSail project. Its flight in 2015 was successful although it did experience two anomalies. The hallmark of this flight is that it was a spacecraft from an organization (The Planetary Society) that is citizen-funded by its members (like me!).

UPCOMING:

• LightSail 2 is a followup mission to LightSail 1 and will be part of the payload for the STP-2 Falcon Heavy launch in April 2018. Its solar sail is 340 sq ft. Its mission is to determine if solar sailing is a viable form of propulsion for cube sats.

• NEA Scout is a future NASA mission which will be one of the secondary payloads on the Orion EM-1 mission in 2019. It is a cubesat spacecraft with a 893 sq ft solar sail. Its mission will be to perform a close fly-by of a near-earth asteroid.

• Trojan Asteroid Explorer is a future JAXA mission to study Trojan system (Jupiter orbit) asteroids with plan to land, collect samples, and eventually return to Earth over the course of decades. It is planned to have a gigantic 26910 sq ft sail.

CANCELLED:

• [Sunjammer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunjammer_(spacecraft\)) was a planned NASA mission, cancelled in 2014. It would have had the largest solar sail ever flown (13000 sq ft).

What are your thoughts on solar sail spacecraft? Do you believe in the future that solar sails could be a popular method of spacecraft/satellite propulsion in the future?

#Imgur Album of the above spacecraft