Spacecraft with Cosmic Sails Could Travel at Hyperspeeds and Reach New Star Systems

Interstellar travel has always been the holy grail of space exploration but with the enormous distances to cover there was simply no way for spacecrafts to reach interstellar space while travelling at speeds way below the speed of light. With cosmic sails attached to spacecraft, the travel time to nearby star systems can be reduced by catapulting spacecrafts at one fifths the speed of light. Using current technology a spacecraft sent to one of our nearest star systems Alpha Centauri in 2022 would not arrive there until the year 82022.

However, by equipping micro-sized spacecraft with cosmic sails, that travel time would be reduced to only 20 years travelling at 20% the speed of light. The idea is that cosmic sails would harness the power of photons (light particles) beamed from an Earth-based laser to propel the spacecraft through interstellar space much like the wind propels a sailing ship. Naturally, a project of this magnitude is fraught with enormous challenges still to be worked out but researchers are hoping that with technology breakthroughs in laser and sail material technology that a cosmic sail equipped spacecraft could be heading towards Alpha Centauri within a few decades.