Research

Breakthrough Starshot begins as a research and development program, aiming to demonstrate proof of concept for ultra-fast light-driven nanocrafts.

The work will be done by our team of renowned scientists, engineers and aerospace experts, based across numerous world-class universities and research centers. We will also be funding research grants (see below). In addition, we welcome contributions from specialists in the relevant fields, and from the public. The Breakthrough Starshot initiative will be establishing a research grant program, and will make available other funding to support relevant scientific and engineering research and development.

The Breakthrough Initiatives are committed to open access, open data and full transparency in research.

The light beamer, lightsail and StarChip concept is based entirely on research that is in the public domain. All sources referred to in the development process so far are listed below.

All theoretical and experimental data produced by the program over the coming years will be posted here.

Interstellar Travel

• Lubin, P. "A Roadmap to Interstellar Flight,” submitted to JBIS (2016)

Technical Books on Interstellar Travel

• Benford, J., and Benford, G., “Starship Century – Toward the Grandest Horizon,” Lucky Bat Books (2013)
• Bolonkin, A. A., “Non Rocket Space Launch and Flight,” Elsevier, ISBN-13 978-0-08044-731-5, ISBN-10 0-080-44731-7, 488 pgs, (2006)
• Czysz, P. A., and Bruno, C., “Future Spacecraft Propulsion Systems – Enabling Technologies for Space Exploration,” second edition, Springer (2006)
• Friedman, L., “Human Spaceflight: From Mars to the Stars,” Univ. of Arizona Press (2015)
• Gilster, Paul, “Centauri Dreams: Imagining and Planning Interstellar Exploration“, Springer, (2004)
• Long, K. F., “Deep Space Propulsion – A Roadmap to Interstellar Flight,” Springer (2012)
• Matloff, G. L. Johnson, L., and Bangs, C., “Living Off The Road In Space – Green Roads to the Cosmos,” Copernicus Books (2007)
• Matloff, G. L., “Deep Space Probes – To the Outer Solar System and Beyond,” second edition, Springer (2005)
• McInnes, C., “Solar Sailing: Technology, Dynamics, and Mission Applications,” Springer-Verlag, NY, (1999)
• Nygren E., “Hypothetical Spacecraft and Interstellar Travel,” Lulu, (2015)
• Vulpetti, G. Johnson, L., and Matloff, G., “Solar Sails – A Novel Approach To Interstellar Travel,” Springer (2015)

Papers on Interstellar Travel and Beamed Laser Propulsion

• Bae, Y. K. “Prospective of photon propulsion for interstellar flight,” Physics Procedia 38, 253-279 (2012)
• Beals, K. A., Beaulieu, M., Dembia, F. J., Kerstiens, J., Kramer, D. L., West, J. R., and Zito, J. A., “Project Longshot: An Unmanned Probe to Alpha Centauri,” US Naval Academy, NASA-CR-184718 (1988)
• Benford, J., “The Power Beaming Route to Space,” Analog, Vol. CXVI, No. 14, (Dec. 1996)
• Benford, J., “Starship Sails Propelled by Cost-Optimized Directed Energy,” Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, Vol. 66, p. 85 (2013)
• Benford, G. and Benford J., “The Ultimate Rocket: Doing Better Than the Sun,” Planetary Report, Vol. 23, pg. 16, (2003)
• Benford, G. and Benford, J., “Power-Beaming Concepts for Future Deep Space Exploration,” Proc. Fourth IAA Symposium on Realistic Near-Term Advanced Scientific Space Missions, J. Brit. Interplanetary Soc. 59, pg. 104, (2006)
• Benford, G., Benford, J., & Benford, D., “Searching for Cost-Optimized Interstellar Beacons,” Astrobiology, Vol. 10, p. 491 (2010)
• Benford, J. N., and Benford, D. J. “Power Beaming Leakage Radiation as a SETI Observable,” (2016)
• Benford, J., Benford, G., & Benford, D., “Messaging with Cost-Optimized Interstellar Beacons,” Astrobiology, Vol. 10, p. 475 (2010)
• Benford, J., Benford, G., Gornostaeva, O., Garate, E., Anderson, M., Prichard, A. and Harris, H. “Experimental Tests of Beam-Riding Sail Dynamics,” Proc. Space Technology and Applications International Forum (STAIF-2002), Space Exploration Technology Conf., AIP Conf. Proc. 608, ISBN 0-7354-0052-0, pg. 457, (2002)
• Benford, J., and Dickinson, R., “Space Propulsion and Power Beaming Using Millimeter Systems”, Intense Microwave Pulses III, H. Brandt, Ed.,SPIE 2557, 179 (1995). Also published in Space Energy and Transportation, 1, 211 (1996)
• Benford, J. and Myrabo, L., “Propulsion of Small Launch Vehicles Using High Power Millimeter Waves”, SPIE 2154, 198 (1994)
• Bible, J., Bublitz, J., Johansson, I., Hughes, G.B., and Lubin, P., “Relativistic Propulsion Using Directed Energy,” Nanophotonics and Macrophotonics for Space Environments VII, edited by Edward W. Taylor, David A. Cardimona, Proc. of SPIE Vol. 8876, p. 887605 (2013)
• Bond, A., and Martin, A. R., “Project Daedalus - Final Report,” Journal of the British Interplanetary Society Supplement, 5-7 (1978)
• Brashears, T., Lubin, P. Hughes, G., McDonough, K., Arias, S, Lang, A., Motta, C., Meinhold, P., Batliner, P, Griswold, G., Zhang, Q. Alnawakhth, Y., Prater, K.,Madajian, J., Sturman, O., Gergieva, J., Gilkes, A., and Silverstein, B., “Directed Energy Interstellar Propulsion of Wafersats,” Proceedings of the SPIE Vol. 9616, Nanophotonics and Macrophotonics for Space Environments IX, (2015)
• Bussard, R., "Concepts for Future Nuclear Rocket Propulsion," Journal of Jet Propulsion Vol. 28, pp. 223-227 (1958)
• Forward, R. L., “Pluto—The Gateway to the Stars,” Missiles and Rockets, Vol. 10, April 1962, pp. 26-28; reprinted as “Pluto: Last Stop Before the Stars,” Science Digest, Vol. 52, pp. 70-75 (1962)
• Forward, R. L., “Roundtrip interstellar travel using laser-pushed lightsails,” Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets, Vol. 21, pp. 187-195 (1984)
• Forward, R. L., “Antiproton annihilation propulsion,” Journal of Propulsion and Power, Vol. 1, pp. 370-374 (1985)
• Forward R.L., “Starwisp: An ultra-light interstellar probe,” J. Spacecraft, 22, 345, (1985)
• Friedman, L., et al., “Solar Sailing—The Concept Made Realistic,” AIAA Paper 78-82, AIAA 16th Aerospace Sciences Meeting, Huntsville, Alabama, pp. 16-18 (1978)
• Garwin, R. L., “Solar Sailing—A Practical Method of Propulsion with the Solar System,” Jet Propulsion, Vol. 28, pp. 188-190 (1958).
• Guillochon, J. and Loeb, A. “SETI via Leakage from Light Sails in Exoplanetary Systems,” The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Vol. 811, pp. L11-15 (2015)
• Hughes, G.B., Lubin, P., O’Neill, H., Meinhold, P., Suen, J., Riley, J., Johansson Hummelgård, I., Bible, J., Bublitz, J., Arriola, J., Motta, C., Griswold, J., Cook, B., Sarvian, N., Clayton-Warwick, D., Wu, J., Milich, A., Oleson, M., Kangas, M., Pryor, M. and Krogen, P., “DE-STAR: phased-array laser technology for planetary defense and exploration,” STARDUST 1st Stardust Global Virtual Workshop on Asteroids and Space Debris 2014, Advances in Space Research - Special Edition: Asteroids and Space Debris, published by Elsevier edited by Massimiliano Vasile (2015)
• Hughes, G.B., Lubin, P., Griswold, J., Bozinni, D., O’Neill, H., Meinhold, P., Suen, J., Bible, J., Riley, J., Johansson, I., Pryor, M. and Kangas, M., “Optical modeling for a laser phased-array directed energy system,” Nanophotonics and Macrophotonics for Space Environments VIII, edited by Edward W. Taylor, David A. Cardimona, Proc. of SPIE Vol. 9226 (2014)
• Landis, G., “Beamed energy propulsion for practical interstellar flight”, JBIS, 52, 420 (1999)
• Landis G.A., “Microwave-pushed interstellar sail: Starwisp Revisited,” paper AIAA-2000-3337, 36th Joint Propulsion Conference (2000)
• Lubin, P., “A Roadmap to Interstellar Flight,” submitted to JBIS (2016)
• Lubin, P., Hughes, G.B.J., Bible, J, Johansson Hummelgård, I., “Directed Energy for Planetary Defense and exploRation - Applications to Relativistic Propulsion and Interstellar Communications” edited by Gerald Cleaver - Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (JBIS) (2015)
• Mallove, E. F., Forward, R. L., Paprotny, Z., and Lehmann, J., “Interstellar Travel and Communication: A Bibliography,” Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, Vol. 33, pp. 201-248 (1980)
• Marx, G., “Interstellar Vehicle Propelled by Terrestrial Laser Beam,” Nature, Vol. 211, July 1966, pp. 22-23 (1966)
• Moeckel, W. E., “Propulsion by Impinging Laser Beams,” Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets, Vol. 9, pp. 942-944 (1972)
• Norem, P. C, “Interstellar Travel, A Round Trip Propulsion System with Relativistic Velocity Capabilities,” American Astronautical Society, Paper No. 69-388 (1969)
• Redding, J. L., “Interstellar Vehicle Propelled by Terrestrial Laser Beam,” Nature, Vol. 213, pp. 588-589 (1967)
• Tsiolkovskiy, К. Е., Extension of Man Into Outer Space, 1921. Cf. also Tsiolkovskiy, К. Е., Symposium on Jet Propulsion, No. 2, United Scientific and Technical Presses (NIT), (1936) (in Russian)
• Tsu, Т. С, “Interplanetary Travel by Solar Sail,” ARS Journal, Vol. 29, June 1959, pp. 442-447 (1959)
• Weiss, R. F., Pirri, A. N., and Kemp, N. H., “Laser Propulsion,” Astronautics and Aeronautics, Vol. 17, pp. 50-58 (1979)

Papers on ChipSats/WaferSats/Femtosats

• Janson, S. W., “Mass-Producible Silicon Spacecraft for 21st Century Missions,” Proceedings of the AIAA Space Technology Conference and Exposition (1999)
• Atchison, J. A. and Peck, M. A., “A Millimeter-Scale Lorentz-Propelled Spacecraft,” Proceedings of the AIAA Guidance, Navigation and Control Conference (2007)
• Atchison, J. A. and Peck, M. A., “A passive, sun-pointing, millimeter-scale solar sail,” Acta Astronautica, Vol. 67, pp. 108-121 (2010)
• Atchison, J. A. and Peck, M. A., “Length Scaling in Spacecraft Dynamics,” Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics, Vol. 34, pp. 231-246 (2011)
• Barnhart, D. J., Vladimirova, T., and Sweeting, M. N., “A low-cost femtosatellite to enable distributed space missions,” Acta Astronautica, Vol. 64, pp. 1123-1143 (2009)
• Barnhart, D. J., Vladimirova, T., and Sweeting, M. N., “Very-small-satellite design for distributed space missions,” Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets, Vol. 44, pp. 1294-1306 (2007)
• Lucking, C., Colombo, C., and McInnes, C., “Electrochromic orbit control for smart-dust devices,” Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics, Vol. 35, pp. 1548-1558 (2012)
• Weis, L. and Peck, M. A., “Active Solar Sail Designs for Chip-Scale Spacecraft,” Proceedings of the AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellites (2014)
• Manchester, Z. and Peck, M. A. and Filo, A., “KickSat: A Crowd-Funded Mission to Demonstrate the World’s Smallest Spacecraft,” Proceedings of the AIAA/USU Conference on Small Satellites (2013)

High Reflectivity Sail Surface

• Hsu, C.-W. et al., “Observation of Trapped Light Within The Radiation Continuum,” Nature, Vol. 499, pp. 188-191 (2013)
• Slovick, B., Gang Yu, Z., Berding, M., and Krishnamurthy, S., “Perfect Dielectric-Metamaterial Reflector,” Physical Review B, Vol. 88, pp. 165116-1 – 165116-7 (2013)

Atacama Site Seeing and Solar Power

• Alatrista, A., “The Atacama Solar Platform: Opportunities and Strategic Dilemmas for Building a Solar Cluster in Chile,” Masters of Science Thesis, Chalmers Univ., No. 2010:13 (2010)
• Giovanelli et al., “The Optical/Infrared Astronomical Quality of High Atacama Sites. II. Infrared Characteristics”, PASP, Vol. 113, p. 789 (2001)
• Giovanelli et al., “The Optical/Infrared Astronomical Quality of High Atacama Sites. I. Preliminary Results of Optical Seeing,” PASP, Vol. 113, p. 803 (2001)

Laser Filamentation

• Couairon, A. and Mysyrowicz, A., Femtosecond filamentation in transparent media. Phys. Rep., Vol. 441, pp. 47–189 (2007)
• Kasparian, J. et al., “White-light filaments for atmospheric analysis”, Science, Vol. 301, pp. 61–64 (2003)
• Mitrofanov, A.V. et al., “Mid-infrared laser filaments in the atmosphere,” Scien. Rep., 8368 (2015)

Solar System Dust

• Poppe, A. R., “An Improved Model for Interplanetary Dust Fluxes in the Outer Solar System,” Icarus, Vol. 264, pp. 369-386 (2016)
• Draine, B. T., “Physics of the Interstellar and Intergalactic Medium,” Princeton University Press (2011)
• E. Grün et al., “Interstellar dust in the heliosphere,” Astron. Astrophysics, Vol. 286, pp. 915-924 (1994)
• M. Landgraf et al., “Aspects of the mass distribution of interstellar dust grains in the solar system from in situ measurements,” Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics (1978–2012), Vol. 105, p. A5 (2000)
• A. R. Howe and R. R. Rafikov, “Probing Oort Cloud and Local Interstellar Medium Properties via Dust Produced in Cometary Collisions,” The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 781, p. 52 (2014)
• U. Yurtsever and S. Wilkinson, “Limits and Signatures of Relativistic Spaceflight,” (2015)
• J-H. Lee, P. E. Loya, J. Lou and E. L. Thomas, “Dynamic mechanical Behavior of Multilayer Graphene via Supersonic Projectile Penetration,” Science, Vol. 346, pp. 1092-1096 (2014)
• J-H. Lee et al., “High strain rate deformation of layered nanocomposites,” Nature communications 3:1164 (2012)
• K. Avinash, K. and G. P. Zank, “Micropropulsion in space via dust-plasma thruster,” Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 14, p. 053507 (2007)

Potential for planets in the Alpha Centauri system

• Anglada-Escude ́et al., “A terrestrial planet candidate in a temperate orbit around Proxima Centauri,” Nature 536, 437–440 (2016)
• Demory, B.O. et al., “Hubble Space Telescope search for the transit of the Earth-mass exoplanet α Centauri B b,” MNRAS, Vol. 450, p. 2043 (2015)
• Dumusque et al., “An Earth-mass planet orbiting α Centauri B,” Nature, Vol. 491, pp. 207-211 (2012)
• Hatzes, A. P., “The Radial Velocity Detection of Earth-mass Planets in the Presence of Activity Noise: The Case of α Centauri Bb,” The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 770, pp. 133-149 (2013)
• Endl, M. et al., “The Mt John University Observatory search for Earth-mass planets in the habitable zone of α Centauri,” International Journal of Astrobiology, Vol. 14, pp. 305-312 (2015)
• Endl, M. et al., “The planet search program at the ESO Coudé Echelle spectrometer. II. The alpha Centauri system: Limits for planetary companions,” Astronomy and Astrophysics, Vol. 374, pp. 675-681 (2001)
• Rajpaul, V. et al., “Ghost in the time series: no planet for Alpha Cen B,” MNRAS, Vol. 456, pp. 6-10 (2016)
• Rafikov, R. and Silsbee, K., “Planet Formation in Stellar Binaries. II. Overcoming the Fragmentation Barrier in α Centauri and γ Cephei-like Systems,” The Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 798, 70 (2015)
• Wiegert, P. A. and Holman, M. J., “The Stability of Planets in the Alpha Centauri System,” Astronomical Journal, Vol. 113, pp. 1445-1450 (1997)
• Thébault, P. et al., “Planet formation in the habitable zone of α Centauri B,” MNRAS, Vol. 393, pp. 21-25 (2009)
• Wiegert, J. et al., “How dusty is α Centauri? Excess or non-excess over the infrared photospheres of main-sequence stars,” Astronomy and Astrophysics, Vol. 563, pp. 102-117 (2014)