Sailing to the stars with photonics

Probing nearby star systems would take thousands of years for today’s spacecrafts due to the immense distances between us and our stellar neighbours. In recent years, lightsails have gained interest as physically realistic interstellar vehicles. Lightsails are envisaged to be thin, highly reflective and lightweight membranes accelerated by high-power lasers up to substantial fractions of the speed of light. This ambitious endeavour entails substantial challenges, the solutions of which are rooted in photonics.