Breakthrough Starshot

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"Starshot" redirects here. For the clay target, see Starshot (target).

Breakthrough Starshot is a research and engineering project by Breakthrough Initiatives to develop a proof-of-concept fleet of light sail spacecraft, named StarChip,[1] capable of making the journey to the Alpha Centauri star system, 4.37 light-years away, at speeds between 20%[2][3][4] and 15% of the speed of light,[5] taking between 20 to 30 years to get there, respectively, and about 4 years to notify Earth of a successful arrival. The conceptual principles to enable this interstellar travel project were described in "A Roadmap to Interstellar Flight", by Philip Lubin of UC Santa Barbara.[6][7]

The project was announced on 12 April 2016 in an event held in New York City by physicist and venture capitalist Yuri Milner and cosmologist Stephen Hawking who is serving as board member of the initiatives. Other board members include Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The project has an initial funding of US$100 million to start research. Milner places the final mission cost at $5–10 billion, and estimates the first craft could launch about 20 years from now.[2]

Objectives

Breakthrough Starshot aims to demonstrate 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. Secondary goals are Solar System exploration and detection of Earth-crossing asteroids.

Concept

The Starshot concept envisions launching a 'mothership' carrying about a thousand tiny spacecraft to a high-altitude orbit, and then deploying them one by one. Ground-based lasers would then focus a light beam on the crafts' lightsails to accelerate them one by one to the target speed within 10 minutes, with an illumination energy on the order of 1 TJ delivered to each sail (4×4 m[8]).[9]

If an Earth-size planet is orbiting within the Alpha Centauri system habitable zones, Breakthrough Starshot will try to aim its spacecraft within 1 astronomical unit (150 million kilometers or 93 million miles) of it. From this distance, a craft's cameras could potentially capture an image of high enough quality to resolve surface features.[10] The fleet would have about 1000 spacecraft, and each one (dubbed a StarChip), would be a very small centimeter-sized vehicle weighing a few grams.[1] They would be propelled by several ground-based lasers of up to 100 gigawatts.[11] Each spacecraft would transmit data back to Earth using a compact on-board laser communications system using its lightsail as an antenna.[11] A swarm of about 1000 units would compensate for the losses caused by interstellar dust collisions en route to the target.[11][12]

Technical challenges

Light propulsion requires enormous power: a laser with a gigawatt of power (approximately the output of a large nuclear plant) would provide only a few newtons of thrust.[13] The spaceship will compensate for the low thrust by having to have a mass of few grams. The camera, computer, communications laser, a plutonium power source, and the solar sail must be miniaturized to fit within a mass limit.[13][14] All components must be engineered to endure extreme acceleration, cold, vacuum, and protons.[12] 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 0.1 micron and up.[13][15] Focusing a set of lasers totaling one hundred gigawatts onto the solar sail will be difficult, due to atmospheric turbulence. According to The Economist, at least a dozen off-the-shelf technologies will need to improve by orders of magnitude.[13]

See also

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References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. ↑ Lightsail, Integrity under thrust.
  9. ↑ Lightsail | Stability on the beam.
  10. ↑ Starshot - Target
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  14. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  15. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

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