NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts is famous for supporting outlandish ideas in the astronomy and space exploration fields. Since being re-established in 2011, the institute has supported a wide variety of projects as part of its three-phase prog
However, so far, only three projects have gone on to receive Phase III funding. And one of those just released a white paper describing a mission to get a telescope that could effectively see biosignatures on nearby exoplanets by utilizing the gravitational lens of our own Sun.
However, there are several striking features of this mission design, one of which is touched on in detail over atInstead of launching a large craft that would take a long time to travel anywhere, the proposed mission would launch several small cube-sats and then self-assemble on the 25-year journey out to the solar gravitational lens point.
However, being boosted to 25 AU a year, the expected speed at which this mission would have to travel isn't easy. And it would be even more challenging for a fleet of ships rather than just a single one. Another seemingly obvious problem would be how to coordinate a passage of multiple satellites through this sort of gut-wrenching gravitational maneuver and still allow them to coordinate joining up to effectively form a fully functional spacecraft in the end.But according to the paper's authors, there will be more than enough time on the 25-year journey out to the observational point to actively rejoin the single Cubesats into a cohesive whole.
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