Between early 2016 and mid-2023, the Interstellar Research Centre, has been working in collaboration with the Breakthrough Initiatives foundation, based in San Francisco, California, USA. This is on Project Starshot, an initiative to send a Gram-scale probe to the stars in the next two decades. The probe would be accelerated by around 10,000 g in a matter of minutes using a large ground based ~100 GW laser array up to 60,000 km/s or 0.2c. It would then take around 20 years to reach its interstellar destination (e.g. Proxima Centauri) and then return the images back to the Solar System in a matter of a few years using a kW peak power optical laser communication systems.

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For the Project Starshot a set of 19 technical physics and engineering challenges were defined for Project Starshot, to include one policy issue.

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The main area of research for which we have been involved is in the subject of interstellar dust and charged particle bombardment on the spacecraft. In addition to general issues of systems architecture. Although we focussed specifically on the issue of dust particle erosion, we also advised on various issues relevant to the vehicle design and mission architecture during the 7 years of our involvement.

References:

  1. R L Forward, Roundtrip Interstellar Travel using Laser-Pushed Lightsails, Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets, Vol.21, pp.187-195, 1984.

  2. R L Forward, Starwisp: An Ultra-light Interstellar Probe, J.Spacecraft, 22, 345, 1985.

  3. G Landis, Beamed Energy Propulsion for Practical Interstellar Flight, JBIS, 52, 420, 1999.

  4. G Landis, Microwave-Pushed Interstellar Sail: Starwisp Revisited, Presented Paper AIAA-2000-3337, 36th Joint Propulsion Conference, 2000.

  5. P Lubin, A Roadmap to Interstellar Flight, JBIS, 2016.

  6. Z Manchester, A Loeb, Stability of a Light Sail Riding on a Laser Beam, arXiv, 29 Sept 2016.

  7. T Hoang et al., The Interaction of Relativistic Spacecrafts with the Interstellar Medium, arXiV, Submitted 18 August 2016.

  8. K F Long, Calculations of Particle Bombardment Due to Dust and Charged Particles in the ISM on the Project Starshot Gram-Scale Interstellar Probe, JBIS, 76(7), 94-111, July 2023.