PROJECT DRAGONFLY

The innovative laser sail technology that could propel us to interstellar space

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The prospect of sending probes on an interstellar mission is often accompanied by thoughts of high costs, decades of planning and large spacecraft. That’s not necessarily the case, though, according to the Institute for Interstellar Studies (i4is), whose goal is to ultimately take humanity out beyond the Solar System. “We believe it’s possible to actually launch probes into deep space, whether it’s outside the Kuiper Belt, into the Oort Cloud or beyond, within the next 10 to 20 years,” Kelvin Long, the executive director of i4is, tells All About Space.

i4is has proposed a spacecraft called Project Dragonfly. This innovative vessel would consist of a central hub that contains all the instrumentation, and in front of it would unfurl a large, thin sail made of material such as mylar, aluminium or graphene. Inside the central hub would be a laser, which would fire upon the sail. The impact of photons on the sail would propel the spacecraft to great speeds, possibly up to ten per cent the speed of light, to make unmanned interstellar travel a more realistic proposition.