the idea is to create a nano-craft spacecraft which can accelerate 20% of the speed of light using array of laser beam. beam of light
According the account on his page this is the first of its kind. 'I'm proud to join Yuri Milner and Stephen Hawking for a new space initiative to go beyond our nearby planets to explore other stars for the first time in human history.'
'Our nearest star, Alpha Centauri, is 4.3 light years or about 25 trillion miles away. Even with today's fastest spacecraft, it would take 30,000 years to get there. That's too long.
The new idea here is that instead of using large spacecraft burning fuel like people have in all traditional space travel, we're going to create a fleet of tiny spacecraft -- or nanocraft -- that we can accelerate to 20% of the speed of light using an array of laser beams from our planet's surface. At that speed of 100 million miles per hour, it will only take 20 years to reach Alpha Centauri. This is a completely new way to think about space travel and exploration.'
'The reason this project is important is recent research has found many
stars have planets within a distance where they could have water to
sustain life. That is, they're close enough to their star that any water
isn't frozen but not so close that it has all evaporated. But just
because a planet is in this habitable zone doesn't mean it has water and
is a place we can actually live. For example, Mars has no water, so it
would be difficult to ever live there. It's quite possible the closest
planet that humans could actually live on is orbiting Alpha Centauri,
and the only way to know that for sure is to visit close enough to
photograph the planet, which is what this project will do' Mark wrote on his page
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