Stellar Flotilla

A thousand spacecraft could head for our closest neighboring planetary system in just a few decades. Don’t book your ticket just yet, though – each craft would weigh about as much as a penny. But working together, they could provide a few sharp pictures of the system, and even look for signs of life. A team of scientists and engineers published the idea earlier this year. The team proposed sending the probes to Proxima Centauri. It’s the closest star outside the solar system – four-and-a-quarter light-years away. And it has two confirmed planets. One of them is about the size and mass of Earth, and it’s in the region that’s most comfortable for life. The probes would be equipped with tough but thin “sails” 13 feet wide. A powerful laser would fire at each probe for eight minutes. The pressure of the light would boost the probes to 20 percent of the speed of light. It would take them 21 years to reach their target. The probes would use lasers to stay in touch with each other, and with Earth. About 300 probes could survive the trip. Their instruments could hunt for evidence of life in the planets’ atmospheres. There’s a lot of work to make it happen – advances in materials, lasers, computers, and even our knowledge of the distance to Proxima Centauri. But the researchers said the current rate of advancement should make such a trip feasible in the decades ahead. Script by Damond Benningfield