NASA plans to land in the Alpha Centauri constellation in 2069

A hundred years after humans landed on the moon, NASA hopes to launch an exploratory survey to explore the system of our nearest neighbor galaxy, Alpha Centaurus. There is only one conundrum: how do we get there?

The "New Scientist" scoop reveals the plans of a team of engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California. The mission concept presented at the American Geophysical Union Annual Meeting also promises to use technologies that do not yet exist. JPL's Anthony Freeman said: "It's very vague.

The only spacecraft leaving our solar system is Voyager 1, which travels through interstellar space at 30,000 miles per hour. While the alpha centaur constellation is right next door to the Milky Way, it's still 4.3 light-years away and 25 trillion miles more for us Earthlings. A spacecraft like a navigator will take nearly 80,000 years to get there.

NASA's team hopes to develop technology that can drive interstellar probes at one-tenth the speed of light. It is speculated that this technique may involve generating thrust by irradiating microorganisms with a laser. Other possibilities include the use of nuclear reactions or material-antimatter collisions.

Even at 10 percent of the speed of light, it will take future probes 44 years to reach Alpha Centauri. But if space agencies want to get there first, NASA could have some competition.

Breakthrough Starshot is a breakthrough from a groundbreaking initiative, a $100 million non-government project created by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner, who also set their sights on Alpha Centauri. They plan to use small chips attached to ultra-thin sails propelled by laser beams to reach 20 percent of the speed of light.

Famous physicist Stephen Hawking is also part of the project. Speaking at a press conference at the One World Observatory, he said: "Beams, light sails and the lightest spacecraft ever built, we can launch to Centaurus in a generation's time." However, there are still some hurdles to overcome before ambitious plans can become a reality.

The Alpha Centauri system consists of three stars, two of which are about the size of our suns orbiting each other and a tiny red dwarf. Proxima Centauri b's discovery has scientists excited about what we might find, an Earth-sized exoplanet that might be suitable for life.

Hawking said: "The limitation we face now is the huge gap between us and the stars, but now we can transcend it. "Because we are human beings, and our nature is to fly."