Azernews.Az

By Alimat Aliyeva

An international team of researchers from Brown University (USA) and Delft University of Technology (Netherlands) has made a groundbreaking advancement in space technology by creating an ultra-thin reflective sail that could pave the way for traveling to the nearest stars, Azernews reports.

The sail measures just 60 by 60 millimeters and is only 200 nanometers thick—about 500 times thinner than a human hair.

The surface of the sail is composed of billions of nanoscale holes, designed specifically for maximum reflectivity while maintaining the necessary strength when suspended in space.

According to study co-author Miguel Bessa from Brown University, this breakthrough could fundamentally alter our approach to interstellar travel, potentially reducing the travel time to Alpha Centauri from thousands of years to just a few decades.

The principle behind a light sail is similar to that of a traditional sail, but instead of wind, it uses the pressure of a laser beam. Powerful ground-based lasers direct light at the sail, and when photons bounce off its surface, they generate an impulse, gradually accelerating the spacecraft to incredible speeds.

The key innovations in this technology are the use of silicon nitride, a material that combines lightweight properties with high strength, and the application of artificial intelligence to optimize the placement of nanowalls on the sail's surface. Additionally, a new gas etching technique has dramatically sped up the manufacturing process while significantly reducing costs.

The researchers believe this technology has great potential for scaling up to larger sizes, with the possibility of creating meter-sized sails in the future. This could enable the launch of miniature, microchip-sized probes to distant stars. The breakthrough represents a significant first step toward humanity’s potential interstellar expansion.

What makes this development especially exciting is that, once scaled up, light sail technology could not only enable interstellar missions but could also provide new ways to explore the outer reaches of our solar system more efficiently. With future advancements, such sails might even become part of missions to study exoplanets, sending back data from light-years away at speeds unimaginable with today's spacecraft. The combination of nanotechnology and AI in space exploration could radically transform our understanding of the universe.