Search Results:

If we’re going to get to the stars, the path along the way has to go through an effort like Breakthrough Starshot. This is not to say that Breakthrough will achieve an interstellar mission, though its aspirational goal of reaching a nearby star like Proxima Centauri...

Recent tests of a 'wafer-craft', an early prototype for what may one day be the 'starchip' envisioned by scientists involved with the Breakthrough Starshot project, have been successful. The work grows out of a NASA-funded effort led by Philip Lubin (UC Santa...

Last Monday's article on the Trillion Planet Survey led to an email conversation with Phil Lubin, its founder, in which the topic of Breakthrough Starshot invariably came up. When I've spoken to Dr. Lubin before, it's been at meetings related to Starshot or...

When we think about what is usually called 'planetary protection,' we're talking about the probes we send to possibly life-bearing places like Mars or Europa. It would confound our investigations if we couldn't be sure we hadn't contaminated such a place with...

Breakthrough Starshot held an 'industry day' on Wednesday May 23rd devoted to its lightsail project to take nanocraft to another star, framing the release of a Request for Proposals during its early concepts and analysis phase. The RFP focuses on the sail itself,...

If Breakthrough Starshot succeeds in launching a fleet of tiny probes to Proxima Centauri in 30 or 40 years, their payloads will be highly miniaturized and built to specifications far beyond our capabilities today. But the small 'Sprites' launched into low Earth orbit...

Who knows why and when we're going to remember things? In the bus on the way to Moffett Field for the second morning of the Breakthrough Starshot meetings, I found myself thinking about Poul Anderson's The Enemy Stars (1959). I had a paperback edition with a beautiful...

A lot of things can go wrong when you're working on a thirty-year project. Consider the charter of the systems subcommittee of Breakthrough Starshot, whose mission is to "...ensure that Starshot engineering activities can and will result in a 0.2c mission to Alpha...

An interesting typo -- I had started to write 'On the plane back from Proxima b,' still a bit groggy from lack of morning coffee. Let's correct that to 'On the plane back from San Francisco.' I was coming back from the Breakthrough Starshot meetings, most of which...