The nearest star, Alpha Centauri, is 4.37 light-years away, which equals to 25 trillion miles. Even NASA’s Voyager 1 space probe – which became the first spacecraft to exploit interstellar space back in 2012 – would take 70,000 years to get there going 10-miles-per-second. Then there are the Helios probes – which are the fastest spacecraft to be launched into space so far – traveling at 155,000 miles per hour (mph). However, even at that speed, it would take 18,000 years to reach Alpha Centauri.
The distance to another solar system, even the nearest one, is astronomical. Humanity may be able to explore space in its Solar System, but venturing into another is different matter.
As discouraging as the situation seems, NASA has not given up hope. The space agency is planning on someday building a nuclear propulsion system that would theoretically allow a spacecraft to reach the nearest star. The associate administrator at NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen, is quite confident that the feat might be possible. He, therefore, believes that NASA should veer away from missions that could be managed by private companies and instead fully commit to answering the big scientific questions.
At the recent launch of the Solar Orbiter probe, Dr. Zurbuchen told The Sunday Telegraph:
Nasa is not a space tourism company and we’re not the same agency that we were during the time of Apollo. We should be doing things that there isn’t a business case for, such as designing a new propulsion system that could take a probe to a star.
We know there are planets there and we should be exploring them. It’s not going to be easy and we haven’t got it figured out yet. But that’s the direction we should be heading.
It’s likely this would be a legacy project that we won’t see happen in our lifetime, but it’s something we should be thinking about and planning for.
A mission to Alpha Centauri has been on NASA’s to-do list for a very long time. Back in 1987, it suggested sending an unmanned probe that would orbit around Alpha Centauri B in as little as 100 years. The project, amusingly called Project Longshot, was abandoned the following year.
Everyone is eager to get to the binary Alpha Centauri star system because it contains rocky planets in the so-called “Goldilocks zone,” which is neither too cold nor too hot for life to thrive.
Other scientists have also expressed interest in reaching our neighboring Solar System. For example, Professor Stephen Hawking had announced plans before he died to design a tiny “nanocraft” fitted with a small sail that could arrive there within 20 years. For this to be possible, the craft would be powered from Earth via a massive array of laser beams fired up into space. When all the lasers come together, they’d form a 100GW beam of light that would propel the tiny craft out of our Solar System at speeds of 100 million mph.
Hawking’s announcement inspired a panel from the US House of Representatives (which oversees NASA’s budgets) to call for the space agency to undertake a mission to Alpha Centauri in 2069. It would be the anniversary of NASA’s Apollo 11 moon landing.
The panel’s report said NASA should:
…study and develop propulsion concepts that could enable an interstellar scientific probe with the capability of achieving a cruise velocity of 0.1c (10% of the speed of light).
When the report was submitted, the committee suggested developing a propulsion system based on nuclear fusion. However, no news followed in regards to whether or not NASA was actively looking into the possibility, until now.
