Scientist: Lasers Could Propel Tiny Spaceships To The Stars
SACRAMENTO (CBS Sacramento) -- Space is big. Unimaginably big. Getting to Pluto took almost a decade even with the fastest spacecraft ever launched from Earth.
Given our current rocket technology, it would take hundreds or even thousands of years to reach our closest interstellar neighbors.
Now a scientist predicts we will one day travel these huge distances by going small, reports LiveScience.
Philip Lubin, a researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara's Experimental Cosmology Group, imagines sending probes to other stars inside a tiny spacecraft.
"Robotic missions, which have really done the bulk of exploration in our solar system, have become the extension of the human mind into far-distant places," Lubin told Space.com. "We don't have a way to send humans to the nearest star, but we do possibly have a way to send our ingenuity to the nearest stars in the form of a very small robotic probe."
Each probe would weigh just one gram, or a fraction of an ounce. They would ride on a laser beam shot from orbit around Earth. Miniature sensors and transmitters would allow the spacecraft to collect information and send it back to scientists on the ground.
Current spacecraft are weighed down by the amount of fuel each must carry to reach its destination.
By using an external propulsion system, spacecraft can slim down, carry less mass, and travel much faster.
A full-size laser array for such a project would be about 6 miles across and be parked in Earth orbit.
The laser setup which Lubin proposes could propel a tiny spacecraft with a 3.3-foot sail up to 26 percent the speed of light in 10 minutes.
The sail catches the photons emitted by the laser and rides them like a sailboat catches the wind.
This system would allow a spacecraft to reach Mars in just 30 minutes; and it would reach Alpha Centauri, the sun's closest neighbor, in 15 years.
The system could be scaled up for larger spacecraft, said Lubin.
His idea is one of 15 that won a Phase 1 grant from NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program in May.
(TM and © Copyright 2015 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2015 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
