It has been about two years since Yuri Milner announced his most audacious piece of science-focused philanthropy: Breakthrough Starshot, an attempt to send hardware to Alpha Centauri by mid-century.

Laser pushed sails—ultrathin need reflective structures that are square meters but weight a gram. If the sails and the payload each weigh a gram, such a spacecraft could accelerate to one fifth of the ...

ON A REMOTE ISLAND in the South Pacific, a black box the size of a loaf of bread houses what could be the future of space flight. The precious cargo is the National Aeronautics & Space ...

NASA on Tuesday said it's investing $2 million over two years to advance the development of a new solar sail concept called diffractive lightsailing. With diffractive lightsails, NASA could ...

NASA engineers and their industry partners are preparing to test two 20-meter (66-feet) long solar sail propulsion system designs — a critical milestone in development of a unique propulsion ...

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. How do you design a sail that can get a spacecraft to another solar system? NASA's Voyager 1 and ...