Proxima Centauri - Interstellar Travel

Interstellar Travel

Proxima Centauri has been suggested as a possible first destination for interstellar travel. The star is in motion toward Earth at a rate of 21.7 km/s; however, it will only come as close as 3.11 light-years, and then move farther away after 26,700 years. If non-nuclear propulsion were used, a voyage of a spacecraft to a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri would probably require thousands of years. A slow-moving probe would have only several tens of thousands of years to catch Proxima Centauri near its closest approach, and could end up watching it recede into the distance. Nuclear pulse propulsion might enable such interstellar travel with a trip timescale of a century, beginning within the next century, inspiring several studies such as Project Orion, Project Daedalus, and Project Longshot.

From Proxima Centauri, the Sun would appear as a bright 0.4-magnitude star in the constellation Cassiopeia.