Solar-powered space travel (and space piracy) moved one step closer to reality on Sunday, when a faulty yet resilient test satellite deployed its solar sails for the first time in Earth orbit.

The privately-funded LightSail satellite successfully unfurled its shiny Mylar solar sail on Sunday afternoon, after overcoming several technical issues that threatened to sink the project altogether. The LightSail will now use its 32-metre-square solar sail to capture light photons from the sun, which should be enough to propel it on a light-powered test flight before it crashes back into Earth鈥檚 atmosphere.

Engineers from the Planetary Society successfully activated the sails on the satellite鈥檚 second pass over the U.S. Sunday afternoon, following an unsuccessful attempt to make contact earlier in the day.

The bread loaf-sized satellite was devised by Bill Nye (the Science Guy) and funded through Kickstarter, in an attempt to demonstrate that light and solar energy can be used as propulsion for space travel.

Nye and his Planetary Society teammates shared their excitement on Twitter Sunday afternoon, as the satellite slowly responded to their commands and opened its sails to the sun.

Nye credited late astronomer Carl Sagan for helping devising the solar sail concept.

The tiny LightSail craft rode a U.S. rocket into space last month and has been orbiting the planet ever since, dropping in and out of contact with its ground controllers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and California State Polytechnic University.

The satellite鈥檚 journey is expected to reach a fiery end sometime in the next 10 days, when it will burn up in the Earth鈥檚 atmosphere.

The LightSail鈥檚 journey has been anything but smooth sailing. The satellite was initially crippled by a software flaw, but a charged space particle eventually struck the craft and jolted it into a computer restart. The LightSail later dropped into sleep mode on two separate occasions due to low battery power. Planetary Society engineers say the LightSail鈥檚 solar panels were collecting energy, but the batteries were not absorbing the charge.

That changed on Saturday, when the LightSail came back online after a three-day blackout period with seven of its eight batteries charged.

The Planetary Society waited for their satellite to come back around again on Sunday, at which point they sent new instructions to trigger the sail deployment. The LightSail motors did not respond on its first pass, but the message got through the second time around.

National Geographic astronomy columnist Andrew Fazekas says this was a trial run for the LightSail, so issues were to be expected.

鈥淭his is really a shakedown, sort of a proof of concept, of the solar sail technology,鈥� he told 麻豆传媒 Channel on Sunday.

He adds that the next LightSail will improve upon the design using lessons learned from the maiden voyage.

Fazekas says solar sail technology would be a 鈥渧ery efficient and very cheap鈥� alternative to fuel-propelled space travel that could open up new areas for exploration.

鈥淭his would be a very efficient, low-cost way to explore the solar system if we can build a large enough sail,鈥� he said.

Nye鈥檚 Kickstarter campaign shattered its $200,000 funding goal earlier this month, accumulating more than $821,000 in pledges from more than 16,500 backers.