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Space

Wafer-thin light sail could help us reach another star sooner

A mission to the sun’s closest neighbouring star, Alpha Centauri, could be made faster thanks to a tiny light sail punctured with billions of tiny holes

By Alex Wilkins

26 July 2024

The 60mm2 wafer that could work as a light sail

This 36-square-centimetre wafer could work as a light sail

L. Norder et al. (2024)

A light sail designed using artificial intelligence is about 1000 times thinner than a human hair and weighs as much as a grain of sand – and it could help us create a spacecraft capable of reaching another star sooner than we thought.

The Breakthrough Starshot mission to travel to Alpha Centauri – the closest star to our solar system – was announced in 2016 and invited researchers to design a spaceship powered by light.

The…

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