Breakthrough Starshot is the idea to send a bunch of tiny nano-spacecraft to the sun's closest stellar neighbor, the three-star system, Alpha Centauri.
Traveling at around 20% the speed of light, around 100 million miles per hour.
The craft and their tiny cameras would aim for the smallest but closest star in the system, Proxima Centauri and its planet Proxima b,4.26 light-years from Earth.
--> The team's goal will rely on a number of as-yet unproven technologies. The plan is to use light sails to get these spacecraft further and faster than anything that's come before.
--> Lasers on Earth will push the tiny ships via their super-thin and reflective sails.
--> The project relies on continuing technological development on 3 independent fronts. Researches will need to dramatically decrease the size and weight of microelectronic components to make a camera.
--> Each nano craft is planned to be no more than a few grams in total and that will have to include not just the camera, but also other payloads including power supply and communication equipment. Another challenge will be to build thin, ultra-light and highly reflective materials to serve as the "sail" for the camera.
--> One possibility is to have a single-layer graphene sail, just a molecule thick, only 0.345 nanometers. The team will benefit from the rising power and falling cost of laser beams.
--> Lasers with 100-Gigawatt power are needed to accelerate the cameras from the ground. Just as the wind fills a sailboat's sails and pushes it forward the photons from a high-energy laser beam can propel.
--> The idea of such propulsion system was first proposed by Carl Sagan in 1976.
NASA is also working on developing a similar system called E-sail. It will likely be at least 2 more decades before scientists can launch a camera traveling at a fraction of the speed of light.
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