![]() NASA's New Horizons interplanetary probe weighed a bit more than a half ton, for example. It won't use a mammoth rocket to propel a heavy spacecraft. Starshot isn't the kind of space mission you're used to. ![]() And maybe we'll get a better idea about just how rare life is in the universe. The attempt by SpaceX and Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk to get humans to Mars looks like a neighborhood stroll by comparison.īut if Breakthrough Starshot succeeds, we could get snapshots of the Alpha Centauri solar system 4 light-years away - roughly the same as 6,800 trips to Pluto - 30 to 40 years from now. It's a monumental engineering challenge that will require huge leaps in technology for spacecraft design, propulsion and communication. They hope to send hundreds of tiny spacecraft to the Alpha Centauri star system, where they'll examine planets for signs of life. That's the goal of a project called Breakthrough Starshot - the brainchild of a Russian billionaire, a former director of NASA's Ames Research Center and a group of high-level physicists and engineers. How about finding out - in our lifetimes - if there's life on planets orbiting our nearest star neighbors? Nearly 50 years after a human first set foot on the moon, maybe it's time for a new challenge in space. This is part of our Road Trip 2018 summer series " Taking it to Extremes," which looks at what happens when people mix everyday tech with insane situations.
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