Proxima b, a distant possibly life-friendly planet also known as “Earth 2.0,” could be visited by a “soap-sized” probe to see what's going on there about 100 years from now.
The “Earth-like world” is located in the Alpha Centauri star system, 4.25 million light years away from Earth, and is said to have a mass greater than the Earth’s, according to the Daily Mail.
Many researchers, over the years, have expressed the belief that alien life does exist, and they’re hoping this new probe could find signs of that life. Proxima b, a planet that was discovered just last year, could provide scientists with what they’re looking for.
In the past, scientists have had a tough time designing a probe equipped to both travel millions of light years away and then slow down enough to actually record specific observations, said the Daily Mail, but now researchers feel they’ve developed a probe capable of doing both, accelerating and slowing down around Proxima b.
It would take nearly 100 years for the probe – 100 grams in weight – to reach Proxima b, according to physicist Dr. René Heller of the Max Planck Institute and computer scientist Michael Hippke.
The new study comes a year after Stephen Hawking’s Breakthrough Starshot project made efforts to send a prototype of its own to Proxima b, according to the Maroc Journal.
That project ran into some roadblocks, though.
Although the prototype, also light in weight, might have had the ability to travel to Alpha Centauri in just two decades, it didn’t have a way of slowing down enough to orbit Proxima b.
“Although such an interstellar probe could reach Proxima 20 years after launch, without propellant to slow it down it would traverse the system within hours,” said Heller, per the Maroc Journal.
“We propose a sail that would be accelerated by the starlight from our Sun,” Hippke said, referring to the newly developed probe. “Our sail would break upon arrival and go into orbit around the planet that we know is there.”
“If the sail has sensors on board, it could detect life on Proxima b,” Hippke said. “Sensors could be cameras, spectrometers like other space probes such as Cassini, Voyager and Mars probes.”
“Our new mission format, acting on a time scale of a century rather than decades, would be more plausible as a follow-up on Starshot or as a companion mission,” Heller said.
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