Hocking Joined The Investor To Launch The Space Program: Alpha Centaurus

"I and I

Breakthrough Starshot has been launched.

It also joined the board of directors of the program to help "breakthrough star".

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(Yuri Milner) on Tuesday announced the launch of a new $100 million project to better understand the universe.

The goal of the project is to develop thousands of small spacecraft to fly to our nearest galaxy and send back photos.

If successful, scientists will be able to tell whether the alpha star system of the Centaurus contains planets like earth that hold the existence of life.

It is about 4.3 light-years away from the earth.

However, it needs to be pointed out that the development of the project called Breakthrough Starshot takes many years, and it is not yet certain whether it will succeed.

Stephen Hocking (Stephen Hawking) (micro-blog) announced the news on Tuesday.

Less than 1 years ago, Milner also announced a 10 year, $100 million project, Breakthrough Listen.

The purpose of this project is to monitor radio frequency signals and explore possible signs of life in the universe.

The Breakthrough Starshot project will develop small spaceships carrying cameras and communication equipment.

Scientists hope that such a small spacecraft can reach 20% light speed.

This is much faster than the current spaceship.

Pete Worden, the former director of the Ames Research Center at NASA, said: "this device looks like a mobile phone chip in a very small spacecraft." (Pete)

The length of the spaceship is about 10 or 12 feet (about 3 to 3.6 meters).

According to his plan, humans can launch larger traditional spacecraft into orbit, and such spaceships will carry thousands of small craft and launch them from orbit.

Two years ago, Cornell University's KickSat had tried this kind of technology.

At that time, the spacecraft carried 104 microsatellites, but these microsatellites failed to launch at last.

Worden acknowledged that there are challenges in this area, for example, the launch of small spacecraft will be impacted.

In addition, these small craft need to fly in the harsh interstellar environment for 20 years to reach the Alpha Centauri, while the interstellar dust will collide with the spacecraft.

Worden said: "the problem remains to be solved."

He believes that because the idea is too radical, the government is unlikely to conduct such research.

However, technology is well prepared, not without the possibility of a trial.

If the small spacecraft arrives at Alpha Centauri and successfully takes photos, it will take more than 4 years to pmit the photos back to earth.

(Wei Jin)

The following is the full text of Hocking micro-blog:

I greet everyone in New York in China. In the viewing tower on the 1st floor of New York City, Yuri Milner and I launched the Breakthrough Starshot, and Mark Zuckerberg joined the board of directors of the program to help "break the star".

In the generation of time, "breakthrough star" aims to develop a "nano vehicle" - an automated space probe with a mass of gram level - and drive it to 1/5 of the speed of light through the beam.

If we succeed, the mission will reach the Alpha Centauri in about twenty years after the launch and send back pictures of the planets found in that galaxy.

Einstein once fantasized about speeding through the universe in a light. This thought experiment laid the foundation for his special theory of relativity.

More than a century later, we have the opportunity to achieve a fraction of the speed of light: one hundred million miles per hour.

Only through such a rapid pace can we hope to reach those stars in the human time scale.

The project is costly and ambitious to explore the limits of human innovation and engineering.

It's very exciting to be able to participate in such a project.