"The lightsail will travel faster than any previous spacecraft, with potential to eventually open interstellar distances to ...

But could humans or spacecraft ever reach Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to our planet? Alpha Centauri is about 4.4 ...

Achieving practical interstellar travel requires overcoming the immense challenge of reaching extraordinary velocities. To ...

Powered by laser light, this tiny sail lays the groundwork for future advances in lightsail technology and the potential for ...

Tiny spaceships could be accelerated by lasers so that they reach the nearest star in 20 years. That's the theory. Now it's ...

"Chemical rockets that we use today, even with the extra speed boost from flying by planets, or from swinging by the sun for ...

A team of scientists has made the first experimental measurements of laser-induced motions of miniature lightsails in the lab.

The project hopes to propel roughly 1,000 tiny "StarChip" spacecraft toward Alpha Centauri, the second-closest star system to Earth, at 20% of light-speed (about 134 million mph). Each "chip ...

But some projects are designing ways to propel payloads to the nearest star system (Alpha Centauri) using beams of electrons. A new proposal uses an electron beam fired from a stable platform near ...

Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to Earth, is home to three stars, one of which is so tantalizingly similar to our sun that many experts speculate that its solar system might contain ...