Most significantly, we might well be able to see images, and likely petabytes of chemical, infrared and other data, from the exo-planet world called Proxima b. It orbits our closest neighbor star, Proxima Centari. And it is likely in the zone where liquid water may persist on the planet surface.

So — the idea is that we use a powerful laser (still in development) built in space, to “push” thousands of one centimeter craft-sails, out of our local system… eventually reaching near relativistic speeds. . . and arriving at the eight light year off Proxima system in about 20 years of one way travel time. From there, the thousands work together, to collect data and imagery, and beam it all back via a “concerto-like” joint effort — in short, but very powerful laser bursts — each aimed back at Earth.

From there, we “catch” these light transmissions, on a space based telescope, not unlike the JWST, decode them — and find out whether life might exist on Proxima b. Here is the latest paper in an astrobiology journal, popularizing this long in development notion — and a bit:

…Tiny gram-scale interstellar probes pushed by laser light are likely to be the only technology capable of reaching another star this century. We presuppose availability by mid-century of a laser beamer powerful enough (~100-GW) to boost a few grams to relativistic speed, laser-sails robust enough to survive launch, and terrestrial light buckets (~1-sq.km) big enough to catch our optical signals. Then our proposed representative mission, around the third quarter of this century, is to fly by our nearest neighbor, the potentially habitable world Proxima b, with a large autonomous swarm of 1000s of tiny probes.

A swarm whose members are in known spatial positions relative to each other, having state-of-the-art micro-miniaturized clocks to keep synchrony, can utilize its entire population to communicate with Earth, periodically building up a single short but extremely bright contemporaneous laser pulse from all of them. Operational coherence means each probe sends the same data but adjusts its emission time according to its relative position, such that all pulses arrive simultaneously at the receiving arrays on Earth. This effectively multiplies the power from any one probe by the number N of probes in the swarm, providing orders of magnitude greater data return.

A swarm would tolerate significant attrition en route, mitigating the risk of “putting all your eggs in one basket,” and enabling close observation of Proxima b from multiple vantage points….

Onward — grinning… “make no small plans“, indeed.

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