Sentences with phrase «laser light sail»

Crossing the huge distance between the Sun and Alpha Centauri using current spacecraft technologies would take several millennia, though the possibility of nuclear pulse propulsion or laser light sail technology, as considered in the Breakthrough Starshot program, could reduce the journey time to a matter of decades.

Not exact matches

But Jeffrey Sheehy, chief engineer of NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C., and Johnson agree that the technology could potentially pave the way for interstellar missions, in which powerful lasers could accelerate sail spacecraft to a tenth the speed of light or faster.

A proposal to spread life says we should use giant lasers and light sails to send microbes out to them

Breakthrough Starshot is an ambitious existing proposal to use giant lasers and light sails to send tiny probes to Alpha Centauri.

As they fall deeper into the dark between the stars, the light sails would attempt to transmit their precious findings back to Earth using laser beams no more powerful than the signal from a typical cell phone.

Rather than using multibillion - dollar laser arrays to boost small light sails to relativistic speeds for one - time flybys, Heller and Hippke propose using starlight alone to send larger sails on more leisurely journeys that would take them to all three stars in the Alpha Centauri system and leave them parked in orbits there.

Interstellar journeys would require a sail as big as Texas and orbiting lasers to provide a light boost; even then, the trip would take centuries, Johnson says.

This would also need a high - powered laser to keep enough light energy focused on the sail.

Conventional rockets would carry the miniature probes into Earth orbit, and a synchronized array of ground - based lasers would then focus its beams on individual sails, imparting enough force to accelerate each probe to 20 percent of the speed of light.

For example, if it takes 20 years to travel 10 light - years to the next star system with a laser - sail system, and then another 10 years to settle it and build new lasers and seed probes there, the settled region will be a sphere growing in all directions at a third of the speed of light on average.

That's why, back on Earth, a 100 gigawatt laser will shoot into the sky and dump enormous amounts of energy into this sail, accelerating the craft to 20 per cent of light speed — enough to coast the 4 light years to Alpha Centauri in 20 years.