Tiny spaceships could be accelerated by lasers so that they reach the nearest star in 20 years. That's the theory. Now it's ...

Traveling from one star to another is currently impossible to achieve within a human lifetime. But some projects are designing ways to propel payloads to the nearest star system (Alpha Centauri) using ...

But could humans or spacecraft ever reach Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to our planet? Alpha Centauri is about 4.4 ...

"Chemical rockets that we use today, even with the extra speed boost from flying by planets, or from swinging by the sun for ...

Astronomers measure a star’s brightness using the apparent magnitude system, where lower values indicate brighter stars. Sirius, Canopus, Alpha Centau ...

A team of scientists has made the first experimental measurements of laser-induced motions of miniature lightsails in the lab.

Getting a spacecraft to another star is a monumental challenge ... "wings" that would allow them to ride a beam of light to Alpha Centauri. However, for practical purposes, a probe that small ...

The project hopes to propel roughly 1,000 tiny "StarChip" spacecraft toward Alpha Centauri, the second-closest star system to Earth, at 20% of light-speed (about 134 million mph). Each "chip ...

It appears to move because it’s so close to the solar system. Only the three-star Alpha Centauri star system, which is 4.1 light-years distant, is closer. In 2016, astronomers found a planet ...