THE FINAL FRONTIER — A team of renowned scientists, Silicon Valley elites and a billionaire businessman have conceptualized a fleet of postage stamp-sized spacecraft for the purpose of interstellar exploration. <br /> <br />According to the New York Times, the board of directors for the mission includes Russian billionaire and entrepreneur Yuri Milner, physicist Stephen Hawking and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. <br /> <br />All technology — including the camera — for the tiny interstellar spacecraft would be placed inside a postage-stamp-sized chip, reported the Los Angeles Times. Called a “Starchip,” this device would come with a light sail to form a nanocraft. This sail has a surface that would use Earth-based laser light to propel it along, reported the New York Times. <br /> <br />The laser light would come from a laser array potentially situated 13,000 feet above sea level in the Atacama Desert in South America, reported Wired citing Milner. Using light energy from the 100-gigawatt laser array, the team plans to send a fleet of these nanocraft to our closest star system, Alpha-Centauri. <br /> <br />The proposed nanocraft could travel at 20 percent of the speed of light, or 134.2 million miles per hour, using laser light propulsion. At that speed, a nanocraft could traverse the 25 trillion miles to Alpha Centauri in a matter of decades, reported the Los Angeles times. while a current spacecraft would take thousands of years. <br /> <br />Dubbed Breakthrough Starshot, Milner has invested around $100 million in the nanocraft concept. However, it will still potentially cost billions and could take up to 30 years to get a swarm of the devices into space if the concept is shown to be successful, reported Wired.
