US Lawmaker To NASA: ‘Develop Mission To Alpha Centauri For 100th Anniversary of Apollo 11’

NASA is being called on by a US lawmaker to start developing its own interstellar study to launch a mission to Earth's nearest star system Alpha Centauri in 2069, which marks Apollo 11 moon landing centennial. The call for the voyage was included in a committee report, along with a bill that sets NASA's funding for the 2017 fiscal year beginning October 1.

The space agency is encouraged by Representative John Culberson to study and develop propulsion ideas that enables an interstellar scientific study, with the ability of obtaining a cruise velocity of 0.1c or about 10 percent of the speed of light.  Although the committee does not order any additional budget, the calls on NASA is to arrive at a report on technology evaluation and conceptual road map with a year.  

NASA scientists, however, consider the concept of interstellar mission to be still firmly in the science fiction territory due to the broad distances involved, with Alpha Centauri at 4.4 light-years, or almost 40 trillion kilometers away. Considering that the fastest spacecraft launched into space, the NASA-Germany Helios probes, travelled at 250,000 kilometers per hour, these probes would take 18,000 years before reaching the nearest star to the sun, according to Earth Sky.

In order for the probes to get there anywhere near a human lifetime, they need to travel a substantial fraction of light-speed; 10 percent could take a craft to Alpha Centauri in 44 years. To obtain such phenomenal speeds, it would need equally extremely large amounts of energy, even for a considerably lightweight probe.

NASA's Starshot project is experiencing this type of a challenge, which resulted in the proposal for the development of a spacecraft-on-a-chip that weighs less than one gram. In addition, the craft must have vast, featherweight light-sails to prevent accelerating the hefty engines and fuel. It will be boosted through the massive range of Earth's high-powered lasers to over 20 percent of light-speed, Huffington Post reported.