Tiny iPhone-sized probes could reach star 25,000,000,000,000 miles away from Earth
dailystar.co.ukstar systems is likely to remain science fiction for a very long to come.The distances involved are so huge that even our fastest spacecraft would take thousands of years to reach even the nearest stars to our Sun.But a groundbreaking initiative using spacecraft powered not by rockets, but by lasers, could potentially take a fleet of spacecraft to our nearest star within one human lifetime.The craft could used to perform a fly-by of Proxima Centauri, sending back data about its potentially habitable planets.There’s just one catch: the spacecraft will be smaller than an iPhone.The project, called Breakthrough Starshot, will enable a swarm of wafter-thin craft carrying cameras, navigation, and communication equipment together with a tiny power supply and a large “sail” made of reflective material.The mini-starships would be propelled into orbit inside a traditional rocket booster, before being deployed and accelerated to up to 20 per cent of the speed of light using an ultra-powerful laser trained on their sails.At those speeds, they could potentially reach the Alpha Centauri system in about 20 years.Russian billionaire Yuri Milner, was one of the project’s early supporters of the Breakthrough concept is based on technology either already available or likely to be available in the near future,” he said in 2016. “But as with any moonshot, there are major hurdles to be solved.”The biggest challenge would be building a laser powerful enough for the job.
Read more on dailystar.co.uk
