How can lightsail technology advance to help humanity travel to other star systems? This is what a recent study published in Nature Communications hopes to address as an international team of researchers developed groundbreaking methods and materials for designing and constructing ultra-thin lightsails that was previously hypothesized to take more than a decade to develop. This study has the potential to help researchers, engineers, and the public better understand developing technologies that could be used to travel beyond the solar system.
For the study, the researchers used advancements in nanotechnology to develop the thinnest reflector ever produced, which will be used to capture solar energy and propel objects to incredible speeds. For example, while current trips to Mars take approximately six months, the researchers estimate their lightsail technology could arrive in less than two weeks. Currently, researchers have been successful in traveling lightsails over distances of picometers (one-trillionth of a meter), but the goal is having them travel light-years from Earth. In the end, the researchers developed a lightsail that is 200 nanometers thick and measures 60 millimeters by 60 millimeters.
“This is not just another step in making things smaller; it’s an entirely new way of thinking about nanotechnology,” said Dr. Richard Norte, who is an associate professor at TU Delft in The Netherlands and a co-author on the study. “We’re creating high-aspect-ratio devices that are thinner than anything previously engineered but span dimensions akin to massive structures.”
This study comes as the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative, which was founded in 2016, has the goal of building a solar sail capable of reaching our nearest star, Alpha Centauri, in only 20 years. For context, Alpha Centauri is 4.34 light-years from Earth, meaning an object traveling at the speed of light would take 4.34 years to make the journey, so the goal of the solar sail is to travel at 15 to 20 percent the speed of light.
Image of the lightsail material produced for this study measuring 60 millimeters by 60 millimeters and 200 nanometers thick (left) with the material presented at the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative announcement in 2016. (Credit: Richard Norte)
What new advancements in lightsail technology will researchers make in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
Sources: Nature Communications, EurekAlert!, Wikipedia
