You’ve likely heard of the Breakthrough Starshot (BTS) initiative. BTS aims to send tiny gram-scale, light sail picospacecraft to our neighbour, Proxima Centauri B. In BTS’s scheme, lasers would propel a whole fleet of tiny probes to the potentially water-rich exoplanet.
Now, another company, Space Initiatives Inc., is tackling the idea. NASA has funded them so they can study the idea. What can we expect to learn from the effort?
Proxima b may be a close neighbour in planetary terms. But it’s in a completely different solar system, about four light-years away. That means any probes sent there must travel at relativistic speeds if we want them to arrive in a reasonable amount of time.
That’s why Space Initiatives Inc. proposes such tiny spacecraft. With their small masses, direct lasers can propel them to their destination. That means they must send a swarm of hundreds or even one thousand probes to get valuable scientific results.
This is much different than the architecture that missions usually conform to. Most missions are a single spacecraft, perhaps with a smaller attached probe like the Huygens probe attached to the Cassini spacecraft. How does using a swarm change the mission? What results can we expect?
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