A nonprofit organization called the Fermi Explorer Mission announced today that it intends to launch a spacecraft to our nearest star system by the end of 2029.
It’s a hugely ambitious mission—if all goes well, the spacecraft could take up to 80,000 years to arrive at Alpha Centauri, which is 4.4 light-years away. And the spacecraft will follow a novel trajectory discovered by an AI system developed by Physical Superintelligence (PSI), an AI physics research lab. PSI is launching today with $58 million in funding led by Breakthrough Energy, a climate-focused investment group founded by Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates.
It’s not the first time this has been tried. In 2016, the billionaire tech investor Yuri Milner announced an interstellar mission called Breakthrough Starshot to launch humanity’s first spacecraft to Alpha Centauri. The plan was to use powerful lasers that would propel tiny probes to a fifth of the speed of light—fast enough to reach Alpha Centauri within 20 years. Milner pledged $100 million toward a proof of concept. But a decade later, nothing has launched.
“We didn’t want to do another Breakthrough Starshot,” says Philip Johnston, the cofounder and president of the Fermi Explorer Mission. “We’re dead set on something actually launching.” The new mission, currently funded by individual private donors, is expected to cost just $15 million.
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