Breakthrough Starshot has goal interstellar travel
Breakthrough Starshot is a research and engineering project by the Breakthrough Initiatives to develop a proof-of-concept fleet of light sail interstellar probes named Starchip, to be capable of making the journey to the Alpha Centauri star system 4.37 light-years away. It was founded in 2016 by Yuri Milner, Stephen Hawking, and Mark Zuckerberg.A flyby mission has been proposed to Proxima Centauri b, an Earth-sized exoplanet in the habitable zone of its host star, Proxima Centauri, in the Alpha Centauri system. At a speed between 15% and 20% of the speed of light, it would take between 20 and 30 years to complete the journey, and approximately 4 years for a return message from the starship to Earth.
The conceptual principles to enable this interstellar travel project were described in "A Roadmap to Interstellar Flight", by Philip Lubin of UC Santa Barbara. Sending the lightweight spacecraft involves a multi-kilometer phased array of beam-steerable lasers with a combined coherent power output of up to 100 GW.General
The project was announced on 12 April 2016 in an event held in New York City by physicist and venture capitalist Yuri Milner, together with cosmologist Stephen Hawking, who was serving as board member of the initiatives. Other board members include Meta Platforms (then known as Facebook, Inc.) CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The project has an initial funding of US$100 million. Milner places the final mission cost at $5–10 billion, and estimates the first craft could launch by around 2036. Pete Worden is the project's executive director and Harvard Professor Avi Loeb chairs the advisory board for the project.Objectives
The Breakthrough Starshot program aims to demonstrate a 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. The spacecraft would make a flyby, and possibly photograph, of any Earth-like worlds that might exist in the system. Secondary goals are Solar System exploration and detection of Earth-crossing asteroids.StarChip
StarChip is the name used by Breakthrough Initiatives for a very small, centimeter-sized, gram-scale, interstellar spacecraft envisioned for the Breakthrough Starshot program, a proposed mission to propel a fleet of a thousand Starchips on a journey to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system, about 4.37 light-years from Earth. The journey may include a flyby of Proxima Centauri b, an Earth-sized exoplanet that is in the habitable zone of its host star. The ultra-light StarChip robotic nanocraft, fitted with light sails, are planned to travel at speeds of 20% and 15% of the speed of light, taking between 20 and 30 years to reach the star system, respectively, and about 4 years to notify Earth of a successful arrival. The conceptual principles to enable practical interstellar travel were described in "A Roadmap to Interstellar Flight", by Philip Lubin of UC Santa Barbara, who is an advisor to the Starshot project.
In July 2017, scientists announced that precursors to Spaceprobe, called Sprites, were successfully launched and flown through Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle by ISRO from Satish Dhawan Space Centre. 105 Sprites were also flown to the ISS on the KickSat-2 mission that launched on November 17 2018, from where they were deployed on March 18, 2019. They successfully transmitted data before reentering the atmosphere and burning up on March 21.