Engineering news
A Kickstarter project is underway to build a “WaferSat spacecraft” that will carry donator’s messages, tweets, photos and DNA into space.
The ultimate aim of the Voices of Humanity project is to push forward technology that will enable interstellar space exploration.
If the campaign can raise $30,000 the project will send people’s personalised data stored on a semiconductor memory device, or ‘Humanity Chip’ on its custom, wafer-sized spacecraft which measures just 4in x 4in and weighs no more than a gram. The WaferSat would include integrated optical communications, optical systems, and sensors.
The launch date for the WaferSat is planned for 2017, with the device to go into Low Earth Orbit. If the campaign can raise $100,000 it will develop a ground based laser communications system coupled to a robotic telescope to send targeted, encoded data to the spacecraft.
The project will then move onto increasingly more sophisticated missions, with the hope that it will eventually go further than previous missions to reach Alpha Centauri.
Voices of Humanity is led by professor Philip Lubin from the University of California (UC) Santa Barbara, in collaboration with Travis Brashears, an engineering physics major at the university. They have previously been working on Nasa-funded research where they used lasers to direct the trajectory of a piece of basalt, demonstrating the feasibility of using the technology to propel rocks away from the Earth.
The next phase of the Voices of Humanity project would be to send the small, wafer-like spacecraft through space using directed energy propulsion (a form of beam-powered propulsion where the energy source is a remote, usually ground-based, laser system). This would mean the craft could be capable of speeds approaching the speed of light and help to achieve interstellar space exploration.
The Kickstarter fundraising page said: “Our long term goal is to send humanity to the stars with directed energy propelled spacecraft that will carry your data as emissaries from Earth. In a sense we will “back up humanity” and use the universe as our “cloud”.”
Pledges for the campaign start at $1 to get a tweet included on the chip.