Project Dragonfly. A Laser-Powered Probe to Alpha Centauri

The distances between stars are so vast, it’s hard to wrap your mind around it. Even our far flung Voyagers have barely reached interstellar space, and would take tens of thousands of years to get to even the nearest star.

But scientists and engineers are considering what it would actually take to send a spacecraft to another star. It’s called Project Dragonfly, and would use existing or near future technologies to send a 3,000 kg spacecraft to Alpha Centauri within 100 years.

Project Dragonfly paper
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094576517319136?dgcid=rss_sd_all#!

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References:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094576517319136?dgcid=rss_sd_all#!
https://i4is.org/
https://theconversation.com/worlds-most-powerful-laser-is-2-000-trillion-watts-but-whats-it-for-45891
http://casa.colorado.edu/~danforth/science/magsail/magsail.html

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