In Quest to Reach Alpha Centauri, Breakthrough Starshot Launches World’s Smallest Spacecraft

Breakthrough Starshot, a multi-faceted program to develop and launch practical interstellar space missions, successfully flew its first spacecraft — the smallest ever launched.
On June 23, a number of prototype “Sprites” – the world’s smallest fully functional space probes, built on a single circuit board — achieved Low Earth Orbit, piggybacking on OHB System AG’s ‘Max Valier’ and ‘Venta’ satellites. The 3.5-by-3.5 centimeter chips weigh just four grams but contain solar panels, computers, sensors, and radios. These vehicles are the next step of a revolution in spacecraft miniaturization that can contribute to the development of centimeter- and gram-scale “StarChips” envisioned by the Breakthrough Starshot project.

The Sprite is the brainchild of Breakthrough Starshot’s Zac Manchester, whose 2011 Kickstarter campaign, “KickSat,” raised the first funds to develop the concept. The Sprites were constructed by researchers at Cornell University and transported into space as secondary payloads by the Max Valier and Venta satellites, the latter built by the Bremen-based OHB System AG, whose generous assistance made the mission possible.

The Sprites remain attached to the satellites. Communications received from the mission show the Sprite system performing as designed. The spacecraft are in radio communication with ground stations in California and New York, as well as with amateur radio enthusiasts around the world. This mission is designed to test how well the Sprites’ electronics perform in orbit, and demonstrates their novel radio communication architecture.

Breakthrough Initiatives – including most notably, Breakthrough Starshot and Breakthrough Listen — are a set of long-term astronomical programs exploring the Universe, seeking scientific evidence of life beyond Earth, and encouraging public debate from a planetary perspective.

Breakthrough Starshot, announced on April 12, 2016, by Yuri Milner and Stephen Hawking, is a $100 million research and engineering program aiming to demonstrate proof of concept for light-propelled spacecraft that could fly at 20 percent of light speed and, in just over 20 years after their launch, capture images and other measurements of the exoplanet Proxima b and other planets in our nearest star system, Alpha Centauri.

Breakthrough Starshot | Project Leadership

– Pete Worden, Executive Director, Breakthrough Initiatives
– Avi Loeb, Chairman, Breakthrough Starshot Advisory Committee; Harvard University
– Harry Atwater, Caltech
– Jim Benford, Microwave Sciences
– Steven Chu, Nobel Prize winner, Stanford University.
– Bruce Draine, Princeton University
– Ann Druyan, Cosmos Studios
– Freeman Dyson, Princeton Institute of Advanced Study
– Lou Friedman, Planetary Society, JPL
– Robert Fugate, Arctelum, LLC, New Mexico Tech
– Giancarlo Genta, Polytechnic University of Turin
– Olivier Guyon, University of Arizona
– Mae Jemison, 100 Year Starship
– Pete Klupar, Director of Engineering, Breakthrough Starshot
– Lawrence Krauss, Arizona State University
– Geoff Landis, SA Glenn Research Center
– Kelvin Long, Journal of the British Interplanetary Society
– Philip Lubin, University of California, Santa Barbara
– Greg Matloff, New York City College of Technology
– Claire Max, University of California, Santa Cruz
– Kaya Nobuyuki, Kobe University
– Kevin Parkin, Parkin Research
– Mason Peck, Cornell University
– Saul Perlmutter, Nobel Prize winner, Breakthrough Prize winner, UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
– Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal
– Roald Sagdeev, University of Maryland
– Ed Turner, Princeton University, NAOJ

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