Nanosail-D Flares

According to two photos of the Nanosail taken from Finland on 30/01/2011 the reflective surface should have been oriented, with respect to a coordinate frame based on vertical-along velocity vectors, as follow:

tilted toward the Earth of 35 - 41 deg.
rotated off the orbital plane of 200 - 202 deg.

This should indicate that the sail orientation was still well far from its stable orientation (normal to the velocity vector) of about 45 degrees.

The following pictures depict the flare tracks for the following 24 hours generated by the same sail orientation. The first picture shows only the flare tracks with the Sun under the local horizon, whilst the second picture shows also the daytime flare tracks.

Fig. 1 - Example of night time flares from Nanosail-D

Fig. 2 - Example of daytime and night time flares from Nanosail-D

Click here to see the Nanosail position in Realtime and to track its passes.       *** New ***