NASA hopes to send a probe to Alpha Centauri in 2069

Engadget ^ | 12/27/17 | Jon Fingas

[Simon Green]

If you thought NASA was playing the long game with its plan to put people on Mars in the 2030s, you haven't seen anything yet. New Scientist has learned that a team at the administration's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has started planning a mission that would send a spacecraft to the Alpha Centauri system in... 2069. Yes, that's 52 years away, and timed around the 100th anniversary of Apollo 11's trip to the Moon. The probe would look for signs of life around the potentially habitable exoplanet Proxima b, giving humanity a much better look than it could get with observation from home.

So why the long wait? Simple: the technology to make this trip realistic doesn't exist yet. The JPL is counting on propulsion technology advancing to the point where the results would come back in time to be meaningful. When Alpha Centauri is nearly 4.4 light-years away, a ship traveling at a tenth the speed of light would take 44 years to arrive. As such, it's doubtful that you or even the next couple generations of your family would live to see the results. The probe wouldn't reach the system until around 2113, and of course the data wouldn't get back to Earth until 4.4 years later at best.

Nonetheless, it's notable that NASA even has a mission like this on its radar, assuming budget cuts and other decisions get in the way. It's starting to think about its role in the very long term, when interstellar exploration won't just be limited to telescopes. And if the time frame gets you down, take heart. Breakthrough Starshot is hoping to launch a small probe that would both depart much sooner and travel much faster, arriving as quickly as 20 years. Think of NASA's 2069 mission as a backup if Starshot doesn't work, or a follow-up that could study the star system in greater depth.

[Simon Green]

Judy Robinson...the others can stay lost.

Bill Mumy was actually quite good on both "The Twilight Zone" and "Babylon 5".

[antidemoncrat]

Rocket speed is 590000000000 mph? Needs high test gas?

[JPG]

I remember a radio show where the crew finally arrive at a planet around another star, looking for life.

They find life....but it was another crew from earth who left years later but arrived years sooner due to improved technology.

[Redcitizen]

I thought we had some ion drives that we can use now to at least get something moving towards alpha centauri.

[wardamneagle]

DANGER !!! DANGER !!!!l

[PIF]

NASA going to Alpha Centauri in 2069; Liu Cixin writes “The Three Body Problem” about the inhabitants and the horrible conditions generated by living on a planet caught by three stars forcing them to come here. Coincidence? I think not.

[onedoug]

Highlighting just a few of the problems with all this alien UFO nonsense.

And that's just our closest stellar system neighbor.

[1_Inch_Group]

Blenderhelmet?

[ml/nj]

Let's p*ss away some more money. When it's halfway there it would take two years for it to receive a mid-course correction and two more years to receive an acknowledgement. When it gets there, if it ever does, aiming its camera will take eight years.

ML/NJ

[tumblindice]

`Tomorrow is Yesterday’: just have a space shuttle `slingshot’ around the Sun. Using that tremendous gravity assist, then go forward in time and discover the technology.
OK do I win anything, like Science Dumbass of the Waning Year? I would like to accept the medal from Abraham Lincoln on Alpha Centauri.

[freedumb2003]

>>Please put Pelosie, Shummer, Hillary and the rest on it. Please.<<

We will name it “The B Ark.”

:)

[CapnJack]

Rocket speed is 590000000000 mph? Needs high test gas?

Forget that! Time for Ludicrous SPEED ... GO!!!

[Revel]

I have seen this article a while back. It is kind of lame as who knows what will be going on in 2069. The technology could be radically better or Man kind could have already perished with a quick whimper.

[freedumb2003]

That was the episode where they had to order Guy and June off the set since the actor/actress could not stop laughing.

And yes, in the first episodes Dr. Smith was an evil genius -- VERY dark and not funny at all. The Robot followed his orders without question (the Robot is why they got lost to begin with).

[Crucial]

For simplicity’s sake and due to the ever increasing rate of technological advances, NASA should probably limit its missions to ten year increments and wait until the technology can make that a reality.

[AnotherUnixGeek]

If you thought NASA was playing the long game with its plan to put people on Mars in the 2030s, you haven't seen anything yet. New Scientist has learned that a team at the administration's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has started planning a mission that would send a spacecraft to the Alpha Centauri system in... 2069.

They might launch it in 2069, but it won't get there for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Proxima Centauri is 4 light-years away. It's nice to think that there might be some breakthrough in the intervening centuries worthy of Star Trek that will allow some Earth ship capable of faster-than-light travel to someday find this probe ambling along toward Alpha Centauri.

[eyedigress]

Try again.

[ridesthemiles]

Quick- Call in Sheldon Cooper.

[wally_bert]

Sounds like a Dimension X episode.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

So why the long wait? Simple: the technology to make this trip realistic doesn't exist yet.