The executive director of Breakthrough StarShot wants India’s participation.
The space exploration program -- Breakthrough StarShot -- announced on April 12, 2016, that has world famous cosmologist Stephen hawking, billionaire venture capitalist Yuri Milner and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg teaming up, has announced that that they are looking for India’s participation.
"For Breakthrough StarShot, our interstellar probe initiative, we note that India is a leader in space exploration, especially with the recent Mars Orbiter Mission. We hope to explore the possibility of working closely with the Indian Space Research Organisation on our StarShot program," said the executive director of the program and former director of Nasa's Ames Research Centre, Pete Worden in an interview with Times of India.
If successful, the project will see thousands of light-propelled vehicles called nanocraft, moving at 20 percent of the speed of light to Alpha Centauri (the closest star system from ours).
To put things into perspective, an eight or nine-month voyage to Mars, will be covered in just 30 minutes by nanocraft. If that's not amazing enough, the standard 10-year long Pluto journey will be cut to 72 hours.
"We are indeed very interested in working closely with both experts and the public in India. Indeed, last August, I visited the Indian Institute of Astrophysics in Bengaluru and spoke with the scientists there about our projects. We plan a return visit to India in the next few months for more discussions. There are a number of areas we hope to involve Indian participation. India is a global leader in information technology and processing," said Worden.
Even though this all seems every intriguing, the technology should take a couple of years to develop and once completed scientists estimate that the ‘nanocrafts’ will take about 20 years to reach their destination.
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