How AI plotted an interstellar journey to Alpha Centauri
How AI plotted an interstellar journey to Alpha Centauri
摘要: Space
How AI plotted an interstellar journey to Alpha Centauri
The Fermi Explorer Mission plans to launch a spacecraft to our nearest star by the en
正文
How AI plotted an interstellar journey to Alpha Centauri
The Fermi Explorer Mission plans to launch a spacecraft to our nearest star by the end of 2029, using a trajectory discovered by AI.
Michelle Kim
archive page
September 1, 2026
Stephanie Arnett/MIT Technology Review | Getty Images, Adobe Stock
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
A nonprofit organization called the
Fermi Explorer Mission
announced today that it intends to launch a spacecraft to our nearest star system by the end of 2029.
It’s a hugely ambitious mission—if all goes well, the spacecraft could take up to 80,000 years to arrive at Alpha Centauri, which is 4.4 light-years away. And the spacecraft will follow a novel trajectory discovered by an AI system developed by Physical Superintelligence (PSI), an AI physics research lab. PSI is launching today with $58 million in funding led by Breakthrough Energy, a climate-focused investment group founded by Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates.
It’s not the first time this has been tried. In 2016, the billionaire tech investor Yuri Milner announced an interstellar mission called
Breakthrough Starshot
to launch humanity’s first spacecraft to Alpha Centauri. The plan was to use powerful lasers that would propel tiny
to a fifth of the speed of light—fast enough to reach Alpha Centauri within 20 years. Milner pledged $100 million toward a proof of concept. But a decade later, nothing has launched.
“We didn’t want to do another Breakthrough Starshot,” says Philip Johnston, the cofounder and president of the Fermi Explorer Mission. “We’re dead set on something actually launching.” The new mission, currently funded by individual private donors, is expected to cost just $15 million.
To stick to that budget, “we are not constraining ourselves to doing it in a human lifetime,” says Johnston. “Let’s just figure out the way to get to another star.”
The spacecraft will carry cargo weighing at least one kilogram. That will include artistic and scientific payl