Jan 1, 2023 05:45 PM
(This post was last modified: Jan 1, 2023 05:53 PM by C C.)
https://www.space.com/interstellar-probe...ther-stars
EXCERPTS: Microbes carried by laser-propelled sails could serve as interstellar probes that can build communications stations to phone home from Alpha Centauri, suggests a scientist known for wanting to resurrect extinct woolly mammoths and use DNA to detect dark matter.
This concept from George Church, a geneticist at Harvard University, builds upon efforts to greatly speed up spaceflight. Current spacecraft usually take years to make trips within the solar system; for example, NASA's New Horizons probe took nearly 10 years to reach Pluto.
[...] the $100 million Breakthrough Starshot initiative, announced in 2016, plans to launch swarms of microchip-size spacecraft to Alpha Centauri, each of them equipped with extraordinarily thin, incredibly reflective sails propelled by the most powerful lasers ever built. The plan has them flying at up to 20% the speed of light, reaching Alpha Centauri in about 20 years.
However, Starshot faces many technical challenges [...]
[...] After the probes reached their destination, Church suggested that genetically modified microbes could build themselves communications modules. ... Church suggested the communications array these probes build could transmit flashes back at Earth. These beams could encode data about the destination site such as temperatures, pressure and pH.
[...] It might prove difficult to find places for these interstellar seeds to grow. "This is why we want millions of shots on millions of target sites," Church said. Scientists could also rely on so-called "extremophile" microbes known to survive extremes of temperature, pH, pressure and other conditions on Earth, Church said.
[...] One major concern would be planetary protection issues — in this case, making sure that Earth microbes do not inflict damage on any alien life that might exist at destinations. Probes can be designed to "aim for strictly limited amount of growth," Church suggested. An "absolutely high priority" would be testing any potential interstellar probes at targets within the solar system first to see how well they perform, he added... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS: Microbes carried by laser-propelled sails could serve as interstellar probes that can build communications stations to phone home from Alpha Centauri, suggests a scientist known for wanting to resurrect extinct woolly mammoths and use DNA to detect dark matter.
This concept from George Church, a geneticist at Harvard University, builds upon efforts to greatly speed up spaceflight. Current spacecraft usually take years to make trips within the solar system; for example, NASA's New Horizons probe took nearly 10 years to reach Pluto.
[...] the $100 million Breakthrough Starshot initiative, announced in 2016, plans to launch swarms of microchip-size spacecraft to Alpha Centauri, each of them equipped with extraordinarily thin, incredibly reflective sails propelled by the most powerful lasers ever built. The plan has them flying at up to 20% the speed of light, reaching Alpha Centauri in about 20 years.
However, Starshot faces many technical challenges [...]
[...] After the probes reached their destination, Church suggested that genetically modified microbes could build themselves communications modules. ... Church suggested the communications array these probes build could transmit flashes back at Earth. These beams could encode data about the destination site such as temperatures, pressure and pH.
[...] It might prove difficult to find places for these interstellar seeds to grow. "This is why we want millions of shots on millions of target sites," Church said. Scientists could also rely on so-called "extremophile" microbes known to survive extremes of temperature, pH, pressure and other conditions on Earth, Church said.
[...] One major concern would be planetary protection issues — in this case, making sure that Earth microbes do not inflict damage on any alien life that might exist at destinations. Probes can be designed to "aim for strictly limited amount of growth," Church suggested. An "absolutely high priority" would be testing any potential interstellar probes at targets within the solar system first to see how well they perform, he added... (MORE - missing details)