The breakthrough initiatives: a new search for life in the universe. S. Pete Worden and Pete Klupar1 Break-through Prize Foundation, 3000 Sand Hill Road, 4-180, Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA, pete@breakthroughprize.org.
- Paper number
IAC-17,D4,4,4,x40570
- Author
Mr. Peter Klupar, Breakthrough Initiatives, United States
- Coauthor
Mr. Jamie Drew, NASA, United States
- Year
2017
- Abstract
Introduction: The Breakthrough Prize Foundation was founded six years ago to celebrate the achievements of the world’s most extraordinary scientists. On July 20, 2015 at the Royal Society in London, Yuri Milner and Stephen Hawking announced the Breakthrough Initiatives - founded by Yuri and Julia Milner to explore the Universe, seek scientific evidence of life beyond Earth, and encourage public debate from a planetary perspective. Funded at $100M, these include a Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) called ‘Breakthrough Listen’ and a prize contest entitled ‘Breakthrough Message’. On April 12, 2016 Yuri Milner and Stephen Hawk-ing announced ‘Breakthrough StarShot’, an initia-tive to develop and launch Earth’s first interstellar probe to our nearest star system, Alpha Centauri, within a generation. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg joined Milner and Hawking to oversee the initiative – initially funded at $100M. Rapid technological advances have opened up the possibility of light-powered space travel significant fraction of light speed. Involving a ground-based light beamer pushing ultra-light nanocrafts – min-iature space probes attached to lightsails – to speeds of up to 100 million miles an hour. Such a system would allow a flyby mission to reach Alpha Centauri – four and a half light-years away - in just over 20 years from launch, and beam home images of possible planets, as well as other scientific data. Breakthrough Starshot will demonstrate proof of concept for the ultra-fast light-driven nanocrafts, and lay the foundations for a first launch to Alpha Centauri within the next generation. The project will generate important supplementary benefits to as-tronomy, including detection of Earth-crossing as-teroids. A number of hard engineering challenges remain before these missions can become a reality. Break-through StarShot has three phases. The first, $100M phase will proceed during the next number of years to develop the key technologies in laser beamer and lightsail technology. The next phase would be a privately-funded $500m-$1billion prototype system designed to propel a nanocraft at an order of magni-tude or more than possible today. Followed by a public-private partnership to build system to direct hundreds of nanoprobes to Alpha Centauri system at 20% speed of light – making journey in about 20 years and sending images back to earth. Key element of StarShot system will be the laser beamer – estimated to consist of an optical system a square kilometer in scale and the sail. We will discuss the current challenges and future plans.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
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