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Researchers at the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) presented a mission plan today at the European Planetary Science Congress that would allow scientists to observe hundreds of asteroids over the course of just a few years. Their plan is to send 50 nanoprobes -- small space instruments -- into the asteroid belt that lies between Mars and Jupiter to take images and chemical measurements of around 300 large asteroids. "Asteroids are very diverse and, to date, we've only seen a small number at close range. To understand them better, we need to study a large number in situ. The only way to do this affordably is by using small spacecraft," FMI's Pekka Janhunen told Popular Mechanics.
The five kilogram probes would be affixed with a tiny telescope and a spectrometer that would analyze chemical samples from the asteroids. The nanoprobes would be propelled through space with electric solar wind sails, or E-sails. The E-sail would be composed of the main spacecraft, a smaller remote unit and a 20-kilometer-long tether that connects the two. That tether would be kept at a positive charge so that when positive ions emitted by the sun and traveling through space come in contact with it, they'll repel each other, giving the probe a nice boost.
[...] You can read the conference paper here.
Source: https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/19/scientists-explore-asteroids-fleet-nanoprobes/
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Wednesday September 20 2017, @09:44PM (1 child)
The asteroid belt is about 1-2 AU away. Proxima Centauri is about 268,332 AU away. They can use smaller lasers for the test. In fact, they can fire the lasers at the StarChips at a lower wattage for a longer period of time since the StarChips would not be accelerating to 15-20% of light speed in order to get to the asteroid belt.
As for the actual goal of reaching Alpha/Proxima Centauri, they estimate that they could send the first craft around 2036. You know what they say about technologies that are 20 years away...
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday September 20 2017, @09:56PM
Yeah, I went on a tangent, commenting in the context of Breakthrough Starshot. Sorry about that.
For inside-the-Solar-system navigation, I believe a solar sail is just enough - the Sun's pumping enough flux around (at 1AU, the solar constant is just above 1kW/sqm in space. At 4AU, it will be just 60-something W, but the Sun's gravity will be equally lower).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford