EXPLORING INTERSTELLAR SPACE

As the Interstellar Probe heads around the Sun it accelerates to a speed far faster than any man-made vehicle has ever achieved before, exceeding 300,000km/h as it picks its path out of the Solar System. At this speed the space probe could travel to Mars in only eight days, but it is going much further than that. The Interstellar Probe will travel out into space for half a century, sending its data back to Earth.

Its destination is the space between stars – interstellar space, where the Sun becomes just one small bright spot among many others in the Milky Way, and where there is nothing but a little gas and dust. Over the 50-year mission the space probe will cover 150 billion kilometres, travelling 1000 times further from the Sun than planet Earth.

For now, however, the Interstellar Probe project is still on the drawing board. The idea was devised by American space scientist Ralph McNutt, who worked on several space missions from 1992 and who has,