A Relativistic Probe to Alpha Centauri

Good space science comes from unexpected quarters. When I interviewed the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s James Lesh about his thinking on communicating with a probe around Alpha Centauri, he pointed out how much can be gained by simply studying the signal sent by a spacecraft. Here in the Solar System, we’ve seen how that signal is affected by passing through a planetary atmosphere as the vehicle moves behind a distant world, an event that tells us much about the atmosphere in question. So in many cases it’s not just the data carried by the communications signal, but how that signal behaves, that tells the tale.

Can we imagine something similar around Alpha Centauri? Lesh envisaged a 20-watt laser communications system sending data from a sophisticated probe. But a new paper takes a different approach, imagining a fast probe moving at relativistic speeds whose sole purpose would be to announce its arrival in the Centauri system and create effects that could be studied from Earth. At 10 ounces, such a probe wouldn’t carry instrumentation (at least, not until our nanotechnology becomes more sophisticated), but it would be the first manmade object ever to reach another star, and it might teach us valuable lessons about the art of starflight.

Full article here:

http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=733