antimatter-driven sail
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Antimatter-driven sail for a Kuiper-belt
mission.
Art: Hbar Technologies, LLC/Elizabeth Lagana
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A type of space sail in which the products
of a matter-antimatter reaction are allowed
to strike the inside surface of the sail and thus provide thrust.
Evaluation of such a system has been carried out by Hbar Technologies with
sponsorship by the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC), an institute
of the Universities Space Research Association. The ultimate goal of the
project is to identify the technological hurdles of dispatching a lightweight
instrument package to another stellar system. First phase of work is foreseen
as a "less demanding" mission: Sending a probe to the Kuiper
belt in a decade's time. The company's work to date suggests that a
small instrument payload could be sent out to a distance of 250 AU from
the Sun in 10 years using 30 milligrams of anti-hydrogen. Preliminary calculations
also indicate that a similar probe could be sent to the next star, Alpha
Centauri, actually a triple star system, in 40 years using grams of
antimatter.
External link
Hbar Technologies
(Antimatter Sail Concept)
Related category
• ADVANCED
PROPULSION CONCEPTS
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