A 20 Year Mission To Find Habitable Planet: 'Self-Healing' Starship to Launch by NASA and Stephen Hawking
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One of the biggest question that mankind could ever have is, "Are we really alone in the universe or are there others out there?"
NASA - Trying to reach the deep space in searching for extraterrestrial life has been working with Stephen Hawking to send a nano-spacecraft to Alpha Centuri, the closest star system to the Solar System.
According to Daily Mail Australia, as part of the Breakthrough Starshot project, the starship "Starchip" was announced last April. Backed up by the Russian billionaire and the founder of Breakthrough initiatives Yuri Milner and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the project aimed to reach the Alpha Centuri in just 20 years in searching for extraterrestrial life.
"For the first time in human history, we can do more than to look at the stars, we can reach them", Yuri Milner said in the 55th Yuri Gargarin's historic flight, in which he became the first man in space.
Nanocraft, a robotic spacecraft has two different main parts, the Starchip and Lightchip.
"Just about the size of a postage stamp but a bit thicker, the Starchip can be massed produced at a cost of an iPhone" Yuri Milner also said as he inspects the chip.
Most recent version of the nanocraft is made of mylar that create a rectangular shape surface with four triangular sails that measures 345 square feet or 32 square meters and 4.5 microns thick, folded at the bottom. The core of the vehicle weighs 22 lbs or 10kgs and is just 11.8 inches or 30cm in height and 3.9 inches or 10cm wide, about a size of a loaf bread.
Capitalising on the exponential advances, the team uses the Silicon Valley approach to space travel involving the deployment of thousands of tiny spacecraft to travel to our nearest solar system and sends back pictures.
In addition, per Inhabitat, such a long-term space travel can somehow impose a great threat to the expedition. Solar radiation, dust and other particles could destroy the starship. So, NASA and the researchers from Korea Institute of Science and Technology has come up with a best solution to the problem - putting up a "self-healing" transistors into the probe.
A "gate-all-around nanowire transistor", light weight and resistant to cosmic rays, are being developed to be able for the probe to self-heal from radiation damage. It can work with both flash memory and logic transistors, while also having a tiny 20-nanometer structure.
With Yuri Milner, Stephen Hawking in his statement said, "Earth is a wonderful place, but it might not last forever. And sooner or later, we must look into the stars."
Hawking also added, "Breakthrough Starshot is very exciting first step on that journey. With light beams, light sails and lightest spacecraft ever built, we can launch a mission to Alpha Centuri within a generation."
Scientist hopes that nanocraft will eventually fly using the photons from the sun that will strike the sail and make it forward at 20 percent of the speed of light. The journey will take 20 years to reach Alpha Centuri.
