{"id":98257,"date":"2025-12-29T17:48:37","date_gmt":"2025-12-29T17:48:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/namibia\/all-news\/new-technology-could-enable-interstellar-travel"},"modified":"2025-12-29T17:51:46","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T17:51:46","slug":"new-technology-could-enable-interstellar-travel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/namibia\/all-news\/new-technology-could-enable-interstellar-travel","title":{"rendered":"New Technology Could Enable Interstellar Travel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #ff6600\"><strong>Africa-Press &#8211; Namibia. <\/strong><\/span>Although humanity is not yet able to perform manned interstellar flights due to their ultra-long duration, scientists have been struggling to solve this problem for a long time. One solution could be \u201csolar sail\u201d technology and, as it turned out recently, this technology could be vastly improved.<\/p>\n<p>A team of physicists led by Mathias Larrouturou, a spaceflight researcher at McGill University, has developed a model for minimazing duration of the interstellar travel.<\/p>\n<p>Calculations have shown that a spacecraft with a modified \u201csolar sail\u201d can \u201cachieve velocities approaching 2 percent of [the speed of light] after a year and a half\u201d or \u201c0.5 percent of [the speed of light] after 1 month.\u201d At this speed, a flight to the nearest stars will last from 100 to 200 years. The Voyager probe, for example, would need tens of thousands of years to do so.<\/p>\n<p>In order to boost the spaceship relatively quickly to speeds many times greater than modern propulsion systems are capable of, scientists have turned their attention to the so-called \u201cdynamic soaring\u201d effect in the Earth\u2019s atmosphere. Birds and gliders usually use this effect to gain speed quickly.<\/p>\n<p>The maneuver is only possible when there are two air masses moving with different speeds. Basically, the apparatus needs to enter the stream at a higher speed against its movement and makes a return loop back into the slower stream, like birds do. With each turn the speed will increase until there is a limit in the form of counter flow resistance.<\/p>\n<p>A similar effect in the speed of solar wind particle streams is observed at the heliospheric border of our solar system, where solar wind particles collide with particles in the interstellar medium. Scientists believe that a spacecraft with a \u201csolar sail\u201d can repeatedly use different particle streams and speed itself up.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cInspired by the dynamic soaring maneuvers performed by seabirds and gliders in which differences in wind speed are exploited to gain velocity, in the proposed technique a lift-generating spacecraft circles between regions of the heliosphere that have different wind speeds, gaining energy in the process without the use of propellant and only modest onboard power requirements,\u201d said researchers in the study.<\/p>\n<p>Obviously, with a common \u201csolar sail\u201d such a maneuver would be very difficult, if not impossible. Scientists have chosen a \u201cmagnetohydrodynamic wing\u201d, created by a system of magnets, to play the role of the \u201csail\u201d. In other words, solar wind particles will be captured by magnetic fields.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe technique may comprise the first stage for a multistage mission to achieve true interstellar flight to other solar systems,\u201d the study concluded.<\/p>\n<p><strong>For More News And Analysis About <span style=\"color: #ff6600\">Namibia<\/span> Follow <span style=\"color: #ff6600\">Africa-Press<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Africa-Press &#8211; Namibia. Although humanity is not yet able to perform manned interstellar flights due to their ultra-long duration, scientists have been struggling to solve this problem for a long time. One solution could be \u201csolar sail\u201d technology and, as it turned out recently, this technology could be vastly improved. A team of physicists led [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":98256,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,9],"tags":[233],"class_list":["post-98257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-miscellaneous","tag-namibia"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.1 (Yoast SEO v27.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>New Technology Could Enable Interstellar Travel - Namibia<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Although humanity is not yet able to perform manned interstellar flights due to their ultra-long duration, scientists ha ...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/namibia\/all-news\/new-technology-could-enable-interstellar-travel\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"New Technology Could Enable Interstellar Travel\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Although humanity is not yet able to perform manned interstellar flights due to their ultra-long duration, scientists ha ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/namibia\/all-news\/new-technology-could-enable-interstellar-travel\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Namibia\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AfricaPressTunisiaa\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-12-29T17:48:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-12-29T17:51:46+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/nambia\/sites\/29\/2025\/12\/sm_1767018088.7361.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1440\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"810\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/namibia\/all-news\/new-technology-could-enable-interstellar-travel#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/namibia\/all-news\/new-technology-could-enable-interstellar-travel\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"cfeditoren\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/namibia\/#\/schema\/person\/068c7ab4e9634ae78ec5d54ec46598bb\"},\"headline\":\"New Technology Could Enable Interstellar Travel\",\"datePublished\":\"2025-12-29T17:48:37+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-12-29T17:51:46+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/namibia\/all-news\/new-technology-could-enable-interstellar-travel\"},\"wordCount\":446,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/namibia\/all-news\/new-technology-could-enable-interstellar-travel#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/nambia\/sites\/29\/2025\/12\/sm_1767018088.7361.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"namibia\"],\"articleSection\":[\"all news\",\"miscellaneous\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/namibia\/all-news\/new-technology-could-enable-interstellar-travel#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/namibia\/all-news\/new-technology-could-enable-interstellar-travel\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/namibia\/all-news\/new-technology-could-enable-interstellar-travel\",\"name\":\"New Technology Could Enable Interstellar Travel - 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