Future space probes could soon be given a massive speed boost thanks to a little help from specialized lasers, which are predicted to be able to allow a space probe to hit over 25 percent the speed of light.
According to Discovery, a gram-sized laser-propelled space probe would be able to reach the star nearest to Earth in just 20 years. At this speed, Mars could be reached in just 3 days.
With standard propulsion technology, such speeds could never be reached. However, according to Philip Lubin, an experimental cosmologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), believes that lasers can be used to accelerate small probes to near-light speeds.
“No other current technology offers a realistic path forward to relativistic flight at the moment,” he said.
Lubin and his team plan on creating a road map that will eventually lead to in-orbit laser arrays that would be capable of launching probes to nearby star systems. The same tech could be used to propel spacecraft-sized cargos to distant planets.
The lasers Lubin suggests utilize photon drives on specialized spacecraft equipped with mirrors. In this way, they are able to use distant light sources for propulsion.
“There is no known reason why we cannot do this, except for NASA budget reasons,” Lubin said.
The only caveat seems to be that there is no known method of slowing down laser-driven spacecraft enough for them to enter enter the orbits of the planets being traveled to.
Lubin and his team also suggest that, should lasers turn out to be the only practical means of achieving interstellar travel, alien civilizations could already be using lasers to explore the universe.