A small nonprofit company called the Fermi Explorer Mission wants to send a probe toward Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to the solar system, for less than $15 million. The team plans to launch within three years, funded almost entirely through public donations rather than a government space agency.

The catch is the timeline. At current propulsion technology, the spacecraft won't arrive for roughly 80,000 years long enough that whoever eventually receives its data, if anyone does, won't share a language with the people who sent it. The team behind it including Adi Oltean, co-founder of the orbital-data-center startup Starcloud actually expects a faster, later spacecraft to overtake it and arrive first. They're launching anyway. Someone has to go first, the reasoning goes, and a working mission, however slow, might push better-funded groups to try.

Donors get their name listed online for $10, or engraved on the spacecraft itself for $100. A full 81-page mission plan is public.

Why it matters: it's a real test of how far crowdfunding and a small team can stretch in a field usually reserved for national space agencies.

Source: TechSpot