Interstellar probe

[Toonu]

Hi, I was wondering about plans to send any probe to nearest solar system. I'm ok with that, even if it will take many many years. But I really don't understand what it will eb doing there. The main problems I don't understand is:

1. How it can be so precise to flyby some of planets/etc. because we need huge telescopes to photo our own planets, and such small probe can't have so big and powerful zooming technology.

2. How it will break there, or it will just flyby and fly to deep space again?

3. How scientist will force it to not miss the system by many many AUs?

4. Even if all of this will be sucessful, how it will come back? Or it will have so powerful communications system to send info back? Won't have so many lossed packets of data? Again, so small probe can't have good dishes, right?

I'm really confused about it, because if the main function of probe will be science data and photos, then there is so many problems I can't solve.

And ideas?

Thanks for ideas nad replies!

Ave! Toonu

[PB666]

4 minutes ago, Toonu said:

Hi, I was wondering about plans to send any probe to nearest solar system. I'm ok with that, even if it will take many many years. But I really don't understand what it will eb doing there. The main problems I don't understand is:

1. How it can be so precise to flyby some of planets/etc. because we need huge telescopes to photo our own planets, and such small probe can't have so big and powerful zooming technology.

2. How it will break there, or it will just flyby and fly to deep space again?

3. How scientist will force it to not miss the system by many many AUs?

4. Even if all of this will be sucessful, how it will come back? Or it will have so powerful communications system to send info back? Won't have so many lossed packets of data? Again, so small probe can't have good dishes, right?

I'm really confused about it, because if the main function of probe will be science data and photos, then there is so many problems I can't solve.

And ideas?

Thanks for ideas nad replies!

Ave! Toonu

1st they want to send thousands, hoping 100s or 1 will survive. So chance are they might pass close to a planet.

2nd they wont brake unless they use lithobraking or coronabraking.

3rd they will try to create all of its trajectory in 300 seconds of accleration based on lasers, lasers should be accurate enough to target it. Meaning, if it can stay in the laser beam for the full 300 seconds it takes to reach 0.2c, then its going to reach AC unless they have got their relativistic physics wrong.

4th. they will not come back, handwaving that they can communicate backwards. Its uncharted technology.

You should call the project lead and ask, maybe in 20 years they will have an answer.

 

[Nibb31]

5 minutes ago, Toonu said:

Hi, I was wondering about plans to send any probe to nearest solar system. I'm ok with that, even if it will take many many years. But I really don't understand what it will eb doing there. The main problems I don't understand is:

1. How it can be so precise to flyby some of planets/etc. because we need huge telescopes to photo our own planets, and such small probe can't have so big and powerful zooming technology.

It won't be able to be controlled from Earth because of the huge latency. It will take several years to beam back any info, and by the time we get it, it will have flown by the system. An interstellar probe can only work if it's autonomous enough to select a target in its own.

5 minutes ago, Toonu said:

2. How it will break there, or it will just flyby and fly to deep space again?

It won't brake (and hopefully, it won't break either). If you're going at interstellar speed, you are going to be travelling very fast, so the best you can do once you get there is to modify your trajectory for a good flyby. The actual flyby will only last a few minutes.

5 minutes ago, Toonu said:

3. How scientist will force it to not miss the system by many many AUs?

The same way New Horizons didn't miss Pluto. Maths. Lots of maths.

5 minutes ago, Toonu said:

4. Even if all of this will be sucessful, how it will come back? Or it will have so powerful communications system to send info back? Won't have so many lossed packets of data? Again, so small probe can't have good dishes, right?

Probes don't usually come back. That's the whole point of sending an unmanned probe.

It will need to beam back any data, which at the speed of light, will take many years to arrive at us. It will need a big antenna.

None of this tech has really been proven yet, so it's really all hypothetical at this point. So don't worry, this isn't going to happen before many years.

 

[Toonu]

46 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:

It won't be able to be controlled from Earth because of the huge latency. It will take several years to beam back any info, and by the time we get it, it will have flown by the system. An interstellar probe can only work if it's autonomous enough to select a target in its own.

 

It will need to beam back any data, which at the speed of light, will take many years to arrive at us. It will need a big antenna.

Yep, it s clear it won't be controlled from Earth... Anyway, big antenna on thousands of probes? Isn't it ... weird idea?

[Aethon]

As to communicating with Earth, the early plan is to use the same method to move communication craft to the opposite side of the Sun from Alpha Centauri, and use our sun as a gravitational lens.

[PB666]

43 minutes ago, Toonu said:

Yep, it s clear it won't be controlled from Earth... Anyway, big antenna on thousands of probes? Isn't it ... weird idea?

No one knows how they intend to pull it off, the foil antennas they propse are not like to be accurate enough to direct  a signal back.

To be frank, the whole idea is not so much about reaching alpha Centauri, its about getting the space industry out of its sweet little rut of using chemical rockets and start thinking about other means of getting science out our kuiper belt and fast. If you think about it highest human earth relative velocity was achieved in1976, basically, new horizons is going a tad faster, we have made almost no gains in increasing spacecraft in 40 years. So the idea is lets set a target and lets see what we can do, if we can get a quarter way to alpha century in say 50 years we can design bigger and better. 

So I am for the project of trying, for the idea we are not there now but if we.....various and sundry intities.....try along the several different areas needed then we are going to be further ahead than just accepting chemical rockets, SEP, and waiting every year for fusion in the next 20 years. That does not mean I think they will achieve thier goals, but alas i didn't think SpaceX could land on a brage two flights in a row. 

Its hard for any one person to have a complete scope of what science can do Near future. We have many new discoveries, some I posted here in the last year, some of these, actually most, are hype, some are breakthrough. To get between that future-fog and future technologies you have to pay engineers to sit down and work out the details, blend new technologies together, and test hypothesis on the really small scale in a lab. 

To give an example they plan to fire GWs of power at a meter square of foil, my experience tells me that no metal can perflectly reflect. If you put a mirror in very bright light the mirror will get hot, and if the reflector is three atoms thick it will reach that point very quickly and it will eventually melt. But they may know something about materials that i don't know, in which case their tolerances could be a thousand/million times higher.

[PB666]

2 hours ago, Aethon said:

As to communicating with Earth, the early plan is to use the same method to move communication craft to the opposite side of the Sun from Alpha Centauri, and use our sun as a gravitational lens.

Thats another caveot they have to plan for, to make use of a gravitational lense you need to place a series of satellites in orbit with the inclination of alpha Centauri, and they have to be at a distance from the sun that would maximize the signal. Pointing the receiver at the sun is bound to pick up alot of other radiation also, so that the recievers would have to be so focused they only pick up radiofrequencies that pass a certain distance from the sun, and not in the sun.

From wikipedia.

[kerbiloid]

Until a swarm of telescopes in 550 AU from Sun, no interstellar probe makes sense.

A system of these telescopes, using the solar gravitational lens (case A) and synchronously taking photos of the same object from different directions with triangulation base 1000 AU (case B) makes a detalized 3d map of all significant celestial bodies in dozens l.y. around the Sun (planets, moons, larger planetoids).

As most of these objects are just one-more-dull-piece-of-stone, no rreason to send probes to them.

Meanwhile the AI abilities also increase, so when people have that detalized 3d map, they already have AI enough powerfull to investigate dull pieces of stone.
So, no reason to send humans to every planet system.
Thus, unmanned probes will be sent to particular planet system - to investigate, say, anomalies and specific continents, rather than "find some planets if they are"

As meanwhile both digitalization and digital replication of material objects will rise high, there will be no reason to send material samples back to Earth.
Because at that time a digital copy of a stone will anyway be more valuable than the original stone itself.
So, no return vehicles.

And if a rare case appears: an advanced life or absolutely significant physical anomaly, only then a crewed expedition should take place.

Edited May 26, 2016 by kerbiloid