Humanity's First Interstellar Mission
When Johann Kepler wrote Galileo Galilei that humans would reach the stars on the heavenly winds, it turns out he wasn't just making a metaphor. While we might not ever make it, spacecraft with sails designed to ride a massive beam of light to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star to Earth, can. The Atlantic looks at how this technology could get us to the stars, with spaceships that cost as much as a smartphone.