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Voyage to Pandora: First Interstellar Space Flight





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Uploaded on Feb 8, 2010


Remarkably, it's anti-matter, the science fiction fuel of choice that could take us there. Normally, it's only created in powerful jets that roar out of black holes. We can now produce small quantities in Earth-bound particle colliders. Will we journey out only to plunder other worlds? Or will we come in peace? The answer may depend on how we see Earth at that time in the distant future.


Their home is a lush moon far beyond our solar system called Pandora. Could such a place exist? And could our technology... and our appetite for exploration... one day send us hurtling out to reach it?

In fact, the supposed site of this fictional solar system is one of our most likely interstellar targets, until a better destination turns up. Pandora orbits a fictional gas planet called Polyphemus. Its home is a real place... Alpha Centauri... the brightest star in the southern constellation of Centaurus.

At 4.37 light years away, it's part of the closest star system to our sun. Alpha Centauri is actually two stars, A and B, one slightly larger and more luminous than our own sun, the other slightly smaller.

The two stars orbit one other, swinging in as close as Saturn is to our Sun... then back out to the distance of Pluto. This means that any outer planets in this system... anything beyond, say, the orbit of Mars... would likely have been pulled away by the companion and flung out into space.

For this reason, Alpha Centauri was not high on planet hunters' lists... until they began studying a star 45 light years away called "Gamma Cephei." It has a small companion star that goes around it every 76 years. Now, it seems... it also has at least one planet.


At least three teams are now conducting long-term studies of Alpha Centauri... searching for slight wobbles in the light of each companion star that could indicate the presence of planets. If they find a planet that passes in front of one of the stars, astronomers will begin intensive studies to find out what it's like.


With its infrared light detectors, this telescope will be able to discern the chemical composition of a planet's atmosphere... and perhaps whether it harbors a moon like Pandora.

One prominent planet hunter predicted that if a habitable world is found at Alpha Centauri, the planning for a space mission would begin immediately. Here's that star duo as seen by the Cassini spacecraft just above the rings of Saturn.



They are moving so quickly that they could whip around the Earth in just 45 minutes, twice as fast as the International Space Station. Voyager I has now traveled over 110 astronomical units. That's 110 times the distance from Earth to the Sun... or about 10 billion miles. But don't hold your breath.

If it was headed in the right direction, it would need another 73,000 years to travel the 273,000 astronomical units to Alpha Centauri. When it comes to space travel, we've yet to realize the dream forged by rocketeers a century ago.



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