“Today, we commit to this next great leap into the cosmos,” Stephen Hawking said today in New York. “Because we are human, and our nature is to fly.”

The famed physicist was speaking at a press conference to launch Breakthrough Starshot, a new space initiative that promises to apply Silicon Valley thinking to space exploration. Hawking, billionaire entrepreneur Yuri Milner and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg are the organization’s board of directors. Hawking says the $100 million program will send small “nanocraft” to explore Earth’s nearest solar system, Alpha Centauri.

Former NASA Ames Research Center director Pete Worden is directing the project, supported by a committee of leading scientists and engineers.

“Imagine hundreds of spacecraft the size of a butterfly, propelled by light beams at record-shattering speeds and journeying to distant stars 4.37 light years away — far deeper into space than human-built probes have ever ventured,” CNN reported of what may be the most ambitious space exploration project in history–one that may not be completed in our lifetimes.

The piece to read on today’s big space news is Dennis Overbye’s, at theNew York Times. He asks, “Can you fly an iPhone to the stars?”

Source: Steven Hawking wants to send tiny ‘nanocraft’ space probes to Alpha Centauri / Boing Boing