As more beacons are transmitted, the file grows in size. When it reaches 32 megabytes-roughly the size of ten compressed music files-it can crash the flight system. The manufacturer of the avionics board corrected this glitch in later software revisions. But alas, LightSail's software version doesn't include the update.
Late Friday, the team received a heads-up warning them of the vulnerability. A fix was quickly devised to prevent the spacecraft from crashing, and it was scheduled to be uploaded during the next ground station pass. But before that happened, LightSail fell silent. The last data packet received from the spacecraft was May 22 at 21:31 UTC (5:31 p.m. EDT).