The nonprofit organization Fermi Explorer Mission announced that it plans to send a spacecraft to the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri, and carry out the launch by the end of 2029. Reaching the system, located 4.4 light-years from Earth, could take up to 80,000 years.
The mission will use a new trajectory discovered by artificial intelligence developed by Physical Superintelligence (PSI). PSI began operations today with 58 million dollars in funding led by Breakthrough Energy, founded by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.
In 2016, Yuri Milner committed 100 million dollars to Breakthrough Starshot, which aimed to accelerate small spacecraft to one-fifth the speed of light using lasers and reach Alpha Centauri in 20 years; however, no launch has taken place despite the passage of ten years. The Fermi team, meanwhile, is aiming for a mission that will actually be launched, even if it cannot be completed within a human lifetime.
The new mission, funded by individual donors, is expected to cost 15 million dollars. The spacecraft will carry at least one kilogram of artistic and scientific payload, messages, and a copy of the Golden Record that NASA placed on the Voyager spacecraft in 1977.
Alpha Centauri is approximately 25 trillion miles away. Voyager 1, which has been traveling since 1977, has covered less than 1 percent of that distance; traveling at the same speed would take more than 70,000 years.
After failing to solve the power-to-weight problem, the Fermi team referred the matter to physicist Alex Wissner-Gross, the founder of PSI. The open-source system called Get Physics Done proposed a new route within one week. The spacecraft would approach the Sun closer than Mercury, and its panels would receive four times more light. The system completed the research in three days using one billion tokens.
Why it matters
This initiative shifts the goal in interstellar research from reaching the destination within a human lifetime to developing a low-cost vehicle that could actually be launched under current conditions. Considered alongside the fact that Breakthrough Starshot has yet to launch, Fermi’s approach will test a claim of feasibility rather than a speed record. The PSI system’s response to the power-to-weight problem by proposing a closer pass by the Sun offers a concrete example of how AI can be used not only in data analysis but also to address the physics and engineering bottlenecks of mission design. At the same time, a journey lasting tens of thousands of years leaves open questions about how the vehicle and the scientific payload it carries could be protected on this scale, and who would be able to receive the mission’s results. The 2029 target provides a concrete benchmark for the plan’s transition from announcement to an actual launch.