The famous cosmologist and a group of other scientists undertook the work on the project billionaire Yuri Milner. The budget of the mission named Breakthrough Starshot it (for now) $ 100 million. The aim is to develop a small robot that using the power of light, doleciałby to the nearest star to us in just 20 years.
– Today, we face the great void that separates us from the other stars – says Hawking. – We can beat her – he added.
The idea is to build a vehicle leciutkiego – chip about the size of a postage stamp with a small sail. The space vehicle will fly aboard the mother ship, and then will be thrown into space using a laser beam. This, in turn, will be launched from Earth.
The vehicle would reach the speed of 20 percent. the speed of light. This is enough to reach the Alpha Centauri – our nearest stellar neighbor distance of 4.37 years light – at about 20 years after launch. Ordinary rocket landed overcome that distance in the … 30 000 years.
Mini-ship tentatively called “Nanocraft.” Despite the tiny size could along the way to take pictures and send them to Earth with a beam of light
– Project Breakthrough Starshot based on the technology already available or about to occur in the near future – says Yuri Milner. Billionaire there is no doubt, however, that the mission will be as expensive as the most expensive experiments today. However, when the technology is developed, sending another similar mission will become much cheaper.
Hawking and Milner are already working on other projects. Last summer jointly inaugurated Breakthrough Listen – an initiative to conduct monitoring of space to search for signals transmitted by intelligent beings. Also Breakthrough Listen expected to cost $ 100 million.
Milner also announced a reward of one million dollars for the people who come up with the best message that we could give to visitors from outer space.
(ew / Space.com)
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