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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The nearest star system to the Sun, α Centauri, has been all the rage after the discovery of an Earth-sized world in the habitable zone around the smallest of its three stars, Proxima Centauri. Scientists, however, are equally eager to learn more about the planetary systems around α Centauri's two larger Sun-like stars, α Centauri A and B. Those systems might offer an environment still more conducive for an Earth-like planet.

Although NASA has plans to eventually develop optical telescopes that might be able to image planets around these stars, some scientists say we should not wait that long. Moreover, these scientists say that, with a modestly sized telescope, we could start looking for Earth-like worlds around Centauri A and B by the end of the decade. To that end, several organizations plan to announce a privately led, non-profit effort to do just that. The project, titled "Project Blue," will be announced on Tuesday.

Project Blue takes its name from the famous Pale Blue Dot image taken by Voyager in 1990, when the probe was about 6 billion km from Earth. Our planet filled just a single blue pixel against the vast, black, seemingly endless heavens. Project Blue aims to capture such an image of one or more Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone around α Centauri A or B.

"We feel that the moment is right [when] there is this confluence of scientific impact and technology maturing rapidly," said John Morse, chief executive of the BoldlyGo Institute, which is co-sponsoring the initiative along with Mission Centaur. "We won't resolve planetary features, but we believe we have a really good chance of seeing something like a pale blue dot."

In an interview with Ars, Morse said he believes Project Blue can be accomplished for comfortably less than $50 million. His goal is to slice the overall cost to less than half of that. This price includes building both the telescope and launching it by the end of the decade. He intends to launch his telescope either as a "ride share" on a larger rocket or on one of the smaller, dedicated microsatellite launchers under development.

Morse said Project Blue will employ an "all of the above" fundraising strategy, beginning with crowdfunding to initiate meaningful technical work on the telescope's design. In addition, the organization will also seek larger-sized donations, beginning with the donor network that has supported the Boldly Go Institute. The organization will also pursue in-kind contributions from partners to keep costs down. [See here for Voyager's pale blue dot image (60.04KB).]

Based upon a number of technical studies, such as this one, Project Blue believes it can obtain a sufficient resolution to image a planet around one of the α Centauri stars with a telescope 50cm or smaller in size (the primary mirror of the Hubble Space Telescope is 2.4 meters).

[...] The proposed telescope should be able to resolve a world that is 0.5 to 1.5 times of the size of Earth and orbiting within the host star's "habitable zone," where water theoretically could exist on the surface. Based on Kepler's data, with two Sun-like stars to search around, Morse said, statistically, the odds of at least one terrestrial planet in the habitable zone is about 80 percent. With enough water on its surface, the planet would appear blue in any visible light image taken. And what a sight that would be.

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