Breakthrough Starshot
[9][10] Sending the lightweight spacecraft involves a multi-kilometer phased array of beam-steerable lasers with a combined coherent power output of up to 100 GW.[11] The project was announced on 12 April 2016 in an event held in New York City by physicist and venture capitalist Yuri Milner, together with cosmologist Stephen Hawking, who was serving as board member of the initiatives.[12] The Breakthrough Starshot program aims to demonstrate a proof-of-concept for ultra-fast, light-driven nano-spacecraft, and lay the foundations for a first launch to Alpha Centauri within the next generation.In January 2017, Breakthrough Initiatives and the European Southern Observatory began collaborating to search for habitable planets in the nearby star system Alpha Centauri.The Starshot concept envisions launching a "mothership" carrying about a thousand tiny spacecraft (on the scale of centimeters) to a high-altitude Earth orbit for deployment.[24][26] In a detailed study in 2016, Thiem Hoang and coauthors[27] found that mitigating the collisions with dust, hydrogen, and galactic cosmic rays may not be as severe an engineering problem as first thought, although it will likely limit the quality of the sensors on board.[26] The spacecraft will have to survive collisions with space dust; Starshot expects each square centimeter of frontal cross-section to collide at high speed with about a thousand particles of size at least 0.1 μm.[52] A laser communicator, utilizing the light sail as the primary reflector, would be capable of data rates of 2.6-15 baud per watt of transmitted power at the distance to Alpha Centauri, assuming a 30 m diameter receiving telescope on Earth.Heller et al.[58] proposed that a photo-gravitational assist could be used to slow such a probe and allow it to enter orbit (using photon pressure in maneuvers similar to aerobraking).The German physicist Claudius Gros has proposed that the technology of the Breakthrough Starshot initiative may be used in a second step to establish a biosphere of unicellular microbes on otherwise only transiently habitable exoplanets.
Starshot (target)Proxima bPete WordenBreakthrough Initiativesproof-of-conceptlight sailinterstellar probesAlpha Centaurilight-yearsYuri MilnerStephen HawkingMark ZuckerbergProxima Centauri bEarth-sizedexoplanethabitable zoneProxima Centaurispeed of lightUC Santa Barbaraphased arraylasersNew York CityMeta PlatformsHarvardAvi LoebEarth-crossing asteroidsEuropean Southern Observatoryhabitable planetsVery Large Telescopemothershipastronomical unitvery small centimeter-sized vehiclehydrogengalactic cosmic raysLight propulsionnewtonsthrustnuclear power sourceaccelerationspace dustatmospheric turbulenceThe Economistorders of magnitudeinterstellarspacecraftstar systemlight sailsPolar Satellite Launch VehicleSatish Dhawan Space CentreKickSatdigital camerasmegapixelsresolutionprocessorsatomic batteryplutonium-238americium-241beryllium copperatomic particlegrapheneaerobrakingLuminosityα Centauri Aα Centauri BSirius AEpsilon EridaniProcyon AAltairFomalhaut ADenebolaCastor AClaudius Grosbiosphereunicellular microbeshabitableexoplanetsmagnetic sailInterstellar probeProject DragonflyProject DaedalusProject IcarusProject Longshot2069 Alpha Centauri missionStarlightStarwispInterstellar travelStarship100 Year StarshipThe New York TimesOverbye, DennisBibcodeWayback MachineLazarian, A.Ars TechnicaScienceGizmodoSpace.comInverseGros, ClaudiusYouTubeAstrobiologyAstrochemistryAstrophysicsAtmospheric sciencesBiochemistryEvolutionary biologyExoplanetologyGeomicrobiologyMicrobiologyPaleontologyPlanetary oceanographyPlanetary scienceAbiogenesisAllan Hills 84001BiomoleculeBiosignatureDrake equationEarliest known life formsEarth analogExtraterrestrial lifeExtraterrestrial sample curationExtremophilesHypothetical types of biochemistryList of microorganisms tested in outer spaceOcean planetPanspermia