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takyon writes:

Researchers have written about some of the challenges involved in building a light sail suitable for Breakthrough Starshot, a project that would accelerate a gram-scale "chipcraft" using lasers so that it could travel interstellar distances in just decades:

A team of researchers at the California Institute of Technology has taken a hard look at the challenges facing efforts to carry out the Breakthrough Starshot project. In their Perspective piece published in the journal Nature Materials, the researchers outline the obstacles still facing project engineers and possible solutions.

The light sail would need to be made of a lightweight but reflective material able to withstand being bombarded by gigawatts of photons without melting. Graphene doesn't qualify. Many of the materials the researchers evaluated have only been studied in their bulk forms, rather than thin films, which can have different properties.

The researchers seem optimistic about the challenges. From the abstract (DOI: 10.1038/s41563-018-0075-8) (DX):

The Starshot Breakthrough Initiative established in 2016 sets an audacious goal of sending a spacecraft beyond our Solar System to a neighbouring star within the next half-century. Its vision for an ultralight spacecraft that can be accelerated by laser radiation pressure from an Earth-based source to ~20% of the speed of light demands the use of materials with extreme properties. Here we examine stringent criteria for the lightsail design and discuss fundamental materials challenges. We predict that major research advances in photonic design and materials science will enable us to define the pathways needed to realize laser-driven lightsails.

Also at Ars Technica.

Previously: Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner's $100 Million Interstellar Spacecraft Plan

Related: NASA Plans to Launch an Interstellar Mission to Alpha Centauri in 2069

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