Breakthrough Initiatives, an organization headed by the great Stephen Hawking, and the European Southern Observatory have just announced the signing of a collaboration agreement whereby both institutions will join forces to, through the use of the Very Large Telescope, which today is considered the most advanced visible light astronomical observatory in the world, located in Chile, explore more carefully Alfa Centauri, the closest star system to Earth.
As you well know, this is not Breakthrough Initiatives' first attempt to reach Alpha Centauri. Within his program, which began to be developed back in April of last year, he proposed the creation of some small space probes that would be sent to this star system in order to better understand how Alpha Centauri is composed or the number of planets it houses.
The European Southern Observatory joins Breakthrough Initiatives in their exploration of Alpha Centauri.
It is at this point that Breakthrough Initiatives and the European Southern Observatory will begin to work together to achieve understand the structure of Alpha Centauri much better to facilitate or not the development of future missions that aim to reach this star system, a task that in principle will not be easy at all since, to get a ship to reach this system, it will be necessary to develop, among other things, ships capable of move at a much higher speed. A clear example is that, if a ship were launched today, it would take about 30 years to reach Alpha Centauri.
Returning to the idea that currently brings together Breakthrough Initiatives and the European Southern Observatory, as has been commented, the Chilean Very Large Telescope will be used to be able to better detect the planets present in Alpha Centauri since the brightness of the stars does not usually leave the planets sufficient visibility.