PROJECT ICARUS: EXPLORING EXOPLANET BIOSIGNATURES

Project Icarus is an ambitious five-year study into launching an unmanned spacecraft to an interstellar destination. Initiated by the Tau Zero Foundation and British Interplanetary Society, and managed by Icarus Interstellar Inc., a non-profit group of scientists dedicated to interstellar spaceflight, Icarus is working to develop a spacecraft that can travel to a nearby star.

The Icarus study is tasked with designing an interstellar space vehicle capable of making in situ scientific investigations of nearby stars

In its long history astronomy has made tremendous advances through studying the light that reaches us from the cosmos, but there is a limit to the amount of information that can be squeezed out of the analysis of starlight and other cosmic radiation. Already we can identify areas where additional knowledge will only be gained by making in situ observations of distant astronomical objects, and this will require specialised scientific instruments to be transported across interstellar space.

The scientific objectives for an Icarus-style interstellar probe can be divided into the following broad categories, which we propose to be in order of increasing priority:

1.Science to be conducted en route during the cruise phase between the stars;
2.Astrophysical studies of the target star itself, or stars if a multiple star system is selected;
3.Planetary science studies of any planets in the target system, including moons, asteroids and comets of interest;
4.Astrobiological/exobiological studies of any habitable (or inhabited) planets or moons which may be found in the target planetary system.