Gadgetory

the Alpha Centauri star system is four light-years from Earth our nearest galactic neighbor a privately funded venture called breakthrough starshot has a plan to send human technology there in the next few decades to do that the first interstellar spaceship will have to be extremely light and extremely fast pete worden the former head of nasa's ames lab now leads the starshot project well the real question that we've got is is there life elsewhere are there other Earth's in star shots master plan which could take flight two decades from now a mothership orbiting Earth will launch a tiny probe called a nano craft the nano craft will carry data gathering electronics on a one-way mission to the Alpha Centauri systems once outside the mothership the Nano craft will inflate a spherical sail next an earth-based laser array will fire a tremendously powerful light beam at the spacecraft in minutes the laser will accelerate the nano craft to 1/5 the speed of light so it can make the 26 million mile trip in 20 years it'll be a dangerous journey so the project eventually will launch hundreds of inexpensive ships because mini will likely fail on the way once the Nano craft arrives at one of alpha Centauri's three suns it won't slow down but it'll gather as much data as possible as it whizzes past the stars and planets with a laser beam of its own the nano craft will fire that data back to earth it's job is done but other nano craft could follow in its footsteps to other nearby stars like Bernard star Tao Zi and Trappist one it's not going to be easy but it looks possible we assembled when we started this about 30 years the world's experts in this and their first reaction was sceptical they said you know they numerated probably 25 big challenges but we started looking at them each one of them is solvable in the next next couple decades this is the century that will leave our solar system and become a galactic species you