NASA Administrator Charles Bolden visited the Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) Scout project at Marshall Space Flight Center on Dec. 14, 2015, in Huntsville, Alabama, where a team completed a half scale-solar sail deployment test. The test confirmed the folding technique, package efficiency, and the deployment mechanism for the solar sail.
During its mission, NEA Scout will perform an approximate two-year cruise propelled by the solar sail to a target asteroid. A camera on the CubeSat will capture a series of low (50 cm/pixels) and high resolution (10 cm/pixels) images to determine global shape, spin rate, pole position, regional morphology, regolith properties, spectral class, and for local environment characterization.
Check out the time-lapse video of the team rolling the half-scale sail for deployment testing.