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Researchers suggest an ion engine could get a telescope to the Solar Gravitational Len point 81 billion kms from Earth in 13 years, and thus allow high resolution imaging of nearby exoplanets. (phys.org)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] Vector 19 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

For comparison, Voyager 1 is almost 24.8 billion km away from Earth right now and has been traveling since 1977 (near on 50 years).

Haven’t read the article yet, but if the headline is anything to go by, very cool if it can be done.

Edit:

Just read the article. Disappointingly but unsurprisingly:

The paper defined an ideal power plan that can output 1 kW per kg of weight.

This is currently well outside the realm of possibility, with the best ion thruster power sources coming at something like 10 W per kg and even nuclear electric propulsion systems outputting 100 W per kg. Some potentially better technologies are on the horizon, but nothing tested in the literature would meet this requirement yet.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Why even publish that? You're not going to get better performance than the already unproven existing nuclear-electric systems any time soon.