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Starwisp is a hypothetical unmanned interstellar probe design proposed by Robert L. Forward. It is propelled by a microwave sail, similar to a solar sail in concept, but powered by microwaves from a man-made source. more...

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Description

"Starwisp" is a concept for an ultra-low-mass interstellar probe pushed by a microwave beam. It was proposed by scientist and author Robert L. Forward in 1985, and further work was published by Landis in 2000. The proposed device uses beam-powered propulsion in the form of a high-power microwave antenna pushing a sail. Unless otherwise noted, all sample figures in this article are from Landis's version. The probe itself would consist of a mesh of extremely fine carbon wires about 100 m across, with the wires spaced the same distance apart as the 3-mm wavelength of the microwaves that will be used to push it.

Forward proposed that the wires would incorporate nanoscale computer circuitry, sensors, microwave power collection systems and microwave radio transmitters fabricated on the wire surfaces, giving the probe data collection and transmission capability. Being distributed across the entire sail, no "rigging" is needed, as would be the case if the mission electronics were placed in a separate probe that was pulled by the sail.

The original Starwisp concept assumed that the microwaves would be efficiently reflected, with the wire mesh surface acting as a superconductor and nearly perfectly efficient mirror. This assumption is, unfortunately, not valid. Landis showed that a grid will absorb a significant fraction of the power incident on it, and therefore cannot stay cool enough to be superconducting. The design is thermally limited, hence the use of carbon as the material in Landis's concept.

Low mass was the key feature of the Starwisp probe. In Landis's calculations, the mesh has a density of only 100 kg/km², for a total mass of 1 kg, plus a payload of 80 grams.

Although the diffraction limit severely constrains the range of the transmitting antenna, the probe is designed to have an extremely high acceleration of 24 m/s², so that it can reach a significant fraction of the speed of light within a very short distance, before passing out of range. The antenna uses a microwave lens 560 km in diameter, would transmit 56 GW of power, and would accelerate the probe to 10% of the speed of light.

The probe would cruise without power for decades until it finally approached the target star, at which point the antenna which launched it would again target its beam on Starwisp. This would be done when the Starwisp was about 80% of the way to its destination, so that the beam and Starwisp would arrive there at the same time. At such extreme long range the antenna would be unable to provide any propulsion, but Starwisp would be able to use its wire sail to collect and convert some of the microwave energy into electricity to operate its sensors and transmit the data it collects back home. Starwisp would not slow down at the target star, performing a high-speed flyby mission instead.

Read more at Wikipedia.org