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Caltech’s Lightsail Experiment Brings Interstellar Travel Closer to Reality

Powered by laser light, this tiny sail lays the groundwork for future advances in lightsail technology and the potential for interstellar propulsion.

A team of researchers at the California Institute of Technology devised a means of measuring the thin membranes of a lightsail, helping prove out a futuristic travel concept first imagined by Johannes Kepler over 400 years ago. Ultimately, these findings will help develop space-ready lightsails—one of the most promising vehicles for interstellar travel, as they rely on an essentially limitless energy source: light. “We not only avoided the unwanted heating effects but also used what we learned about the device’s behavior to create a new way to measure light’s force,” said co-author Lior Michaeli, a physicist at Caltech, in the release.

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