«Startup» is just clickbait in the heading. The article clearly states it is a nonprofit org. They’re just making a small cubesat and throwing it in the direction of Alpha Centauri.
No way it has enough power and signal range to communicate any scientific findings back to Earth.
No way is has the ability to decelerate so it could enter orbit and/or make a controlled landing on a planet.
No way it has sufficient ability to maneuver and correct course during travel, so it will probably miss the Alpha Centauri system altogether and just go whizzing right past it.
Best case scenario (requiring a whole lot of luck) is that it randomly ends up in a wide orbit around Alpha Centauri, to perhaps someday be a curiosity rediscovered by astro-archaeologists. Just a curiosity, mind you – not officially the first successful interstellar mission, because (hopefully) a faster and more effective mission is launched within the next 80,000 years and actually gets there first.
Oh, I guess there’s also a vanishingly small possibility that intelligent technological life might develop in the Alpha Centauri system within the next 80,000 years … in time for them to be able to detect the cubesat when it arrives. They’ll get a kick out of finding evidence of another technological civilization from the stars … one that’s probably long dead or entirely replaced by robots or something by that point.
«Startup» is just clickbait in the heading. The article clearly states it is a nonprofit org. They’re just making a small cubesat and throwing it in the direction of Alpha Centauri.
Well … that’s kind of useless, isn’t it?
No way it has enough power and signal range to communicate any scientific findings back to Earth.
No way is has the ability to decelerate so it could enter orbit and/or make a controlled landing on a planet.
No way it has sufficient ability to maneuver and correct course during travel, so it will probably miss the Alpha Centauri system altogether and just go whizzing right past it.
Best case scenario (requiring a whole lot of luck) is that it randomly ends up in a wide orbit around Alpha Centauri, to perhaps someday be a curiosity rediscovered by astro-archaeologists. Just a curiosity, mind you – not officially the first successful interstellar mission, because (hopefully) a faster and more effective mission is launched within the next 80,000 years and actually gets there first.
Oh, I guess there’s also a vanishingly small possibility that intelligent technological life might develop in the Alpha Centauri system within the next 80,000 years … in time for them to be able to detect the cubesat when it arrives. They’ll get a kick out of finding evidence of another technological civilization from the stars … one that’s probably long dead or entirely replaced by robots or something by that point.