Congressman John Culberson urged NASA to begin work on an automated mission to the closest star to the Sun, Alpha Centauri, in 2017. The mission is to be dispatched, according to the Republican's plans, in 2069 and will be timed to coincide with the centenary of the landing of astronauts on the moon. Reported by Science News.
The main focus is on developing propulsion concepts that would accelerate the interstellar probe to 10 percent of the speed of light. During the next fiscal year (starting October 1, 2017) NASA is due to provide a feasibility report on the project.
Currently, the most promising project for sending an automatic station to Alpha Centauri is DEEP-IN (Directed Energy Propulsion for Interstellar Exploration). The program is led by astrophysicist Philip Lubin of the University of California at Santa Barbara (USA). Supported by NASA's Institute for Advanced Research.
Lubin proposes to assemble a constellation of lasers in near-earth orbit with a total area the size of Manhattan (an area in New York) and use it to accelerate miniature space probes to relativistic speeds. The mission to Alpha Centauri will most likely be a flyby: the station's speed will be too high to slow down.
A similar project (based, among other things, on Lyubin's ideas) was proposed in March 2016 by Russian businessman Yuri Milner and British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking. Their Starshot program also envisions sending several miniature laser-sail stations to Alpha Centauri. The DEEP-IN and Starshot projects have met with criticism from many scientists.
Alpha Centauri is a binary star system 4.36 light years distant from Earth. It probably also contains one more star - the red dwarf Proxima (which, strictly speaking, will be the star closest to the Sun). The two large stars in Alpha Centauri are similar in characteristics to the Sun.