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troutman · 02-01-2017, 01:53 PM

What it would take to reach the stars

A wild plan is taking shape to visit the nearest planet outside our Solar System. Here’s how we could get to Proxima b.

http://www.nature.com/news/what-it-w...-stars-1.21402

The idea of reaching Proxima b is not just science fiction. In fact, a few months before the discovery of the exoplanet, a group of business leaders and scientists took the first steps towards visiting the Alpha Centauri star system, thought to be home to Proxima. They announced Breakthrough Starshot, an effort backed by US$100 million from Russian investor Yuri Milner to vastly accelerate research and development of a space probe that could make the trip. When Proxima b was found (G. Anglada-Escudé et al. Nature 536, 437–440; 2016), the project gained an even more tantalizing target.

Getting there won’t be easy. Despite Proxima b’s name, it is still nearly 2,000 times farther from Earth than any human-made object has ever travelled. To reach it within a scientist’s working lifetime, a probe would have to reach around one-fifth the speed of light and navigate a treacherous path through unseen debris in our own Solar System and interstellar space. Then it would need to collect useful data during a 60,000-kilometre-per-second fly-by of the Proxima system, and beam the information back across the 4 light years to Earth. It all amounts to a monstrous engineering challenge, but project researchers say it is possible and are now moving towards that goal.

The Starshot team plans to use conventional rockets to send its probes into orbit. Then a 100-gigawatt laser array on Earth would fire continuously at the sail for several minutes, long enough to accelerate it to 60,000 kilometres per second.

02-01-2017, 01:53 PM	#2909
troutman Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Crowsnest Pass Exp:	What it would take to reach the stars A wild plan is taking shape to visit the nearest planet outside our Solar System. Here’s how we could get to Proxima b. http://www.nature.com/news/what-it-w...-stars-1.21402 The idea of reaching Proxima b is not just science fiction. In fact, a few months before the discovery of the exoplanet, a group of business leaders and scientists took the first steps towards visiting the Alpha Centauri star system, thought to be home to Proxima. They announced Breakthrough Starshot, an effort backed by US$100 million from Russian investor Yuri Milner to vastly accelerate research and development of a space probe that could make the trip. When Proxima b was found (G. Anglada-Escudé et al. Nature 536, 437–440; 2016), the project gained an even more tantalizing target. Getting there won’t be easy. Despite Proxima b’s name, it is still nearly 2,000 times farther from Earth than any human-made object has ever travelled. To reach it within a scientist’s working lifetime, a probe would have to reach around one-fifth the speed of light and navigate a treacherous path through unseen debris in our own Solar System and interstellar space. Then it would need to collect useful data during a 60,000-kilometre-per-second fly-by of the Proxima system, and beam the information back across the 4 light years to Earth. It all amounts to a monstrous engineering challenge, but project researchers say it is possible and are now moving towards that goal. The Starshot team plans to use conventional rockets to send its probes into orbit. Then a 100-gigawatt laser array on Earth would fire continuously at the sail for several minutes, long enough to accelerate it to 60,000 kilometres per second.