Project Starlight is a NASA-funded mission to develop the technologies to enable interstellar space exploration. The approach is simple—these spacecraft will fly out of the solar system on the tip of a powerful Earth-based laser beam that accelerates the vehicles to a significant fraction of the speed of light.
Of course, these craft will be tiny—weighing just a few grams each. But they are set to become Earth’s most distant interstellar travellers, outpacing in just a few days the distance that the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft have travelled in decades.
Now Stephen Lantin at the University of Florida and colleagues, say these spacecraft could be capable of carrying Earth’s first interstellar astronauts. These astronauts will not be human, they say. Instead, Project Starlight spacecraft should carry much smaller and hardier creatures that will be capable of surviving the extreme temperatures, accelerations and radiation that such a voyage is likely to entail. And Lantin and co are already designing the capsules that will carry these creatures.
