AI Just Found a New Way to Reach the Stars

A small nonprofit called the Fermi Explorer Mission wants to launch a 1-kilogram probe toward Alpha Centauri, our nearest star system 4.4 light-years away. The trip would normally take 40,000 to 80,000 years—longer than human civilization has existed. But this time, the route was plotted by an AI system called Get Physics Done, developed by Physical Superintelligence (PSI), a physics lab funded partly by Bill Gates' climate investment group.

The AI discovered a new flight plan: the probe would swoop extremely close to the sun—closer than Mercury—where sunlight is four times stronger. Firing its engine during these close passes would give the tiny probe enough power to speed up efficiently, while keeping the craft small and cheap. Humans had tried and failed to solve this problem for a year. The AI cracked it in three days.

The mission is intentionally slow and low-cost: just $15 million, funded by private donors. It will carry a kilogram of cargo—art, science experiments, and a modern version of the famous Golden Record that NASA sent on Voyager probes in 1977. The team doesn’t expect results in their lifetime. As cofounder Philip Johnston put it: “Let’s just figure out the way to get to another star.”

This isn’t the first interstellar dream. In 2016, billionaire Yuri Milner pledged $100 million to launch tiny probes using giant lasers, aiming to reach Alpha Centauri in 20 years. A decade later, nothing has launched. The Fermi team wanted something that could actually leave Earth.