Breakthrough Starshot

Getting to Proxima Centauri b will take a lot of new technologies, but there are increasingly exciting reasons to do so. Both public and private efforts have started seriously looking at ways to make it happen, but so far, there has been one significant roadblock to the journey—propulsion.

NASA and the Pentagon intensified UFO investigations following the 2021 report, exploring potential alien probes in our solar system and decoding enigmatic celestial phenomena.

A new analysis of the fabled Bussard Ramjet shows that the spacecraft would need an impossibly big magnetic field to achieve interstellar travel.

Article URL: https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2023/09/13/reflections-on-breakthrough-starshot/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37573649 Points: 1 # Comments: 0

Although the distances between the stars and planets are vast, our Universe, and even our own Solar System, remains a violent place. Fragments of matter, mostly arising from the asteroid and Kuiper…

On Run 6 of the magnetic sled through the likely crash site of the first recognized interstellar meteor, IM1, the expedition research team recovered shards of corroded iron. At first, we thought it…

Researchers seek to develop advanced propulsion systems that can transform long-distance space exploration.

MIT Lincoln Laboratory launched a nanosatellite that will test new autonomous capabilities in space. It will also test an imaging capability for disaster response efforts and an optics capability for communications as well as tracking objects, such as space debris.

Article URL: https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4460/1 Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33214164 Points: 1 # Comments: 0

Driven by his lifelong passion for science and his belief that the work of great scientists enriches us all, Yuri Milner has founded and invested millions into the Breakthrough Foundation, which oversees various projects that champion innovative research, reward established and emerging scientists, and further humanity's search for intelligent extraterrestrial life.

Five years ago, the mysterious object dubbed "Oumuamua" streaked across our sky. Scientists still have no idea what it is.

Imagine your first day in class, realizing that there is a genius in it far smarter than anything you had ever witnessed before. That student gets the correct answers instantly with no effort and…

The James Webb Space Telescope is a fantastic space megaproject. We need more of them.

Space travel can be agonizingly slow: For example, the New Horizons probe took almost 10 years to reach Pluto. Traveling to Proxima Centauri b, the closest habitable planet to Earth, would require thousands of years with even the biggest rockets. Now, researchers calculate in ACS' Nano Letters that low-power lasers on Earth could launch and maneuver small probes equipped with silicon or boron nitride sails,…

Astronomers have been waiting decades for the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, which promises to peer farther into space than ever before. But if humans want to actually reach our nearest stellar neighbor, they will need to wait quite a bit longer: a probe sent to Alpha Centauri with a rocket would need roughly 80,000 years to make the trip.

Solar sails are well suited for life-hunting missions to icy, ocean-harboring moons like Europa and Enceladus, a new study suggests.

After our first run through the site of the first recognized interstellar meteor, IM1, we found plenty of volcanic dust on our magnetic sled, containing tiny particles less than a tenth of a…

Alpha Centauri is our closest stellar neighbor, a binary star system located just 4.376 light-years away. Despite its proximity, repeated astronomical surveys have failed to find hard evidence of extrasolar planets in this system. Part of the problem is that the system consists of two stars orbiting each other, which makes detecting exoplanets through the two most popular methods very challenging. In 2019,…

Wonderful news! We just received full funding for the Galileo Project expedition to scoop the fragments of the first interstellar meteor (IM1), CNEOS 2014–01–08, that landed on the Pacific Ocean…

Want to go to space? It could cost you.