Announced the start of the Breakthrough Starshot project worth 100 million dollars, during which the spacecraft must reach the nearest star system Alpha Centauri in 20 years.
Russian billionaire Yuri Milner and British physicist cosmologist Stephen Hawking announced the start of an ambitious project at a special press conference that took place on April 12, 2016 in New York. Innovators conceived interstellar travel. But no travelers. They will launch a tiny spacecraft - the so-called nanosatellite, accelerate it to 60 thousand kilometers per second (20 percent of the speed of light, about 160 million kilometers per hour) and send it to the Alpha Centauri star system - the closest to our Sun.
Alpha Centauri is just over 4 light years away - roughly 40 trillion kilometers. The fastest modern probes could cover this distance in 30 thousand years. And the nanosatellite should fly in 20 years. And for 100 million dollars, which Yuri Milner allocated for a good cause.
The main "trick" of the project is that the spacecraft will be accelerated from the Earth. That is, he does not need fuel. Not jet jets, but a very thin sail a few molecules thick will carry the nanosatellite into interstellar distance. On it - on the sail - will be "pressed" by laser beams directed from a special platform. They will "crush" and accelerate.
The required sail area is 1-2 square meters, the total laser power is 100 gigawatts.
To other stars the sail will carry
Laser beams will push the sail
Promotional video:
According to Yuri Milner, all the components necessary for the construction of both the satellite and the sails already exist. Moreover, they now weigh very little. For example, since 2000, chips, cameras, batteries, receivers and transmitters have become 200 times lighter. And the process of relief continues. As a result, by the time the mission starts, which is scheduled for 2030, the weight of the nanosatellite can be brought to 220 milligrams. And rush.
Alpha Centauri is a double star, but from Earth looks like one
If things work out, then the device will fly past the stars of Alpha Centauri in 2050, the transmitted information will reach us in another four years. In total, whether there is life there, we will know, God forbid, by 2055. Which is generally not bad. The project will be led by Pete Worden, the former director of Nasa Ames Research Center. He promises that the device will even be equipped with a maneuvering system so as not to collide with the planets of the Alpha Centauri system, which may be there. Pete seriously hopes that their planets will be able to be photographed and transmitted to Earth. At the same time, he believes that there can be found brothers in mind. The probability of such an event, according to Warden, is 1 percent.
The mission's scientific council included dozens of scientists and engineers. Among them, Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences, former director of the Space Research Institute, Roald Sagdeev. Mark Zuckerberg joined the board of directors.
Skeptics, however, doubt the success of the plan. Are they wondering if the laser beams will damage the sail? Is it deformed? Will miniature electronics be destroyed? In general, is it possible to accelerate any object with a laser beam to subluminal speeds? And most importantly, will it be possible to transmit the collected information to Earth?
These questions will not remain unanswered - they will be provided by the studies scheduled for the coming years.
BTW
Less is more
This is a new trend in "satellite building" - miniaturization of vehicles, - Nikolay Dzis-Voinarovskiy, chief integration manager of Lin Industrial (it develops the first Russian private missiles), told Alexander Milkus. - There appeared electronics, components that allow assembling a satellite weighing several kilograms, capable of performing the same tasks that were performed by automata weighing hundreds of kilograms. Moreover, the cost of components has dropped markedly. Now it is really more profitable to release a swarm of nano- or microsatellites in order to get the desired result. If one or even several such satellites fail, the task will still be completed. You will not need to build a new rocket, spend huge money on replenishing the group.
AT THIS TIME Brothers in mind, Alpha Centauri, a double star in the constellation Centauri: Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B may live there. Astronomers do not exclude that the third star, Proxima Centauri, is located next to them. She is a red dwarf and is invisible to the unarmed. Alpha Centauri A and B are similar in characteristics to the Sun, but older than it, at least one and a half billion years. One star is slightly larger than our star, the other is slightly smaller. The red dwarf is very small.
Alpha Centauri system compared to our Sun
It was in Alpha Centauri that James Cameron placed the fictional extraterrestrial world of the movie Avatar. He settled the cinematic brothers in mind - blue Navi - not on an independent planet like our Earth, but on Pandora - the satellite of the gas giant Polyphemus, similar to our Saturn or Jupiter. It looks like Cameron's script is prophetic. At first, scientists confirmed his first fantastic prediction. Computer simulations by Javiera Guedes and Greg Laughlin of the University of California, Santa Cruz have shown that Alpha Centauri must have terrestrial rocky planets. Moreover, with surface conditions suitable for life. Even before the release of Avatar on the screens, researchers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) said that extraterrestrial life is most likely to be found on the satellites of the gas giants, the so-called exoluns. - of a suitable size with water and an atmosphere - are by no means rare objects in the Universe. An example of this is, for example, our solar system. Titan, the moon of Saturn, has a very dense atmosphere and terrestrial relief. Europa, the moon of Jupiter, hides a multi-kilometer ocean thickness under a layer of ice And if our gas giants were closer to the Sun, in a warmer zone, then life on their satellites could well exist, up to reasonable, like on Pandora.extraterrestrial life is most likely to be found just on the satellites of the gas giants - on the so-called exomoons. And they themselves - exoluns - of a suitable size with water and an atmosphere - are by no means rare objects in the Universe. An example of this, for example, is our solar system. Titan, a satellite of Saturn, has a very dense atmosphere and terrestrial relief. Europa, a satellite of Jupiter, hides many kilometers of ocean under a layer of ice. And if our gas giants were closer to the Sun, in a warmer zone, then life on their satellites could well exist. Up to reasonable. Like Pandora.extraterrestrial life is most likely to be found just on the satellites of the gas giants - on the so-called exomoons. And they themselves - exoluns - of a suitable size with water and an atmosphere - are by no means rare objects in the Universe. An example of this, for example, is our solar system. Titan, a satellite of Saturn, has a very dense atmosphere and terrestrial relief. Europa, a satellite of Jupiter, hides many kilometers of ocean under a layer of ice. And if our gas giants were closer to the Sun, in a warmer zone, then life on their satellites could well exist. Up to reasonable. Like Pandora. Europa, a satellite of Jupiter, hides many kilometers of ocean under a layer of ice. And if our gas giants were closer to the Sun, in a warmer zone, then life on their satellites could well exist. Up to reasonable. Like Pandora. Europa, a satellite of Jupiter, hides many kilometers of ocean under a layer of ice. And if our gas giants were closer to the Sun, in a warmer zone, then life on their satellites could well exist. Up to reasonable. Like Pandora.
Aliens can inhabit the satellite of the giant planet near Alpha Centauri
And in 2012, astronomers at the European Southern Observatory announced that they had discovered at least one planet near Alpha Centauri B. A nanosatellite launched to a nearby star will have something to see. And show us. The prospect of looking at a completely different world is simply mesmerizing.
Vladimir LAGOVSKY
