About Pellet-Beam Propulsion System:
- The pellet-beam concept was partly inspired by the Breakthrough Starshot initiative, which is working on a 'light-sail' propulsion system.
- This system requires two spacecraft – one that sets off for interstellar space, and one that goes into orbit around Earth.
- The spacecraft orbiting Earth would shoot a beam of tiny microscopic particles at the interstellar spacecraft.
- Those particles would be heated up by lasers, causing part of them to melt into plasma that accelerates the pellets further, a process known as laser ablation.
- Those pellets could reach 120 km/second (75 miles/second) and either hit the sail of the interstellar spacecraft or repel a magnet within it, helping to propel the spacecraft to huge speeds that would let it whizz out of our heliosphere – the bubble of the solar wind around our Solar System.
- This proposal examines a new propulsion architecture for fast transit of heavy (1 ton and more) payloads across the Solar System and to the interstellar medium.
