The development was the result of joint activities of British and German researchers.
Scientists from Germany and the UK proposed to use a system of electric and magnetic sails for braking travelling in interstellar space stations.
Devoted to the study of the Preprint, the authors published on the website arXiv.org.
The space station able to travel to other stars and to transmit to Earth the data obtained must be comparable to light speed. Apparently, the first interstellar travel will span as high speed device will not allow it to enter orbit stars or exoplanets.
Meanwhile, for more effective data collection aboard the international space station, likely to need to reduce your speed. In their work, the researchers propose to do it with a magnetic sail. It allows you to use a static magnetic field for deflecting charged particles (representing particles of the stellar wind) and is particularly effective for braking at high speeds station.
According to scientists, using a system of magnetic and electric sails will allow the most effective to make interstellar flights. For example, for acceleration to 15 thousand kilometers per second (which is five percent of the speed of light) the ship unit weight of 8250 pounds will need 29 years. If the system is to be used only from a electric sail, it will take 35 years, only the magnetic — 40 years.
Recently, the Russian businessman Yuri Milner and the British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking has announced the beginning of works on creation and the sending of the companion to α Centauri. The initiative called the Breakthrough Starshot, could become the first mission of man-made spacecraft to another star.
