Hitching a ride on an extrasolar object – Take lots of supplies and plan for 10000 years
Hitching a ride on an extrasolar object – Take lots of supplies and plan for 10000 years — I was working out what is needed to image nearby stars and planets. But I remembered that Oumuamua extrasolar object.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliosphere#Heliopause
If another one passes by, or there was some way to catch up, Elon Musk or one of those other new space companies and countries could send hundreds of metric tons of supplies and equipment, robots, telescopes, nuclear reactors, and big transmitters and receivers to hitch a ride. We can do that now.
It has a trajectory that can be refined by tracking, to help map distant gravity of the sun and a more and more distant radio telescope node. I bet 6G methods can reduce the size of transmitters and receivers. At the same time spread microSats all over the solar system for mm wave (C/1E-3 = 2.99792458E11 Hertz = 0.299792457 TeraHertz) down to nanoHertz data collections.
If Elon Musk sized satellites are put in orbit around Moon and Mars, they can handle solar system Internet and carry labs and sensors as well. I wonder if radio astronomers ever dream of going to Mars orbit to work on solar system sized baseline astronomy for both electromagnetic and gravitational astronomy?
The Heliopause is about 123 Astronomical Units from the sun and the Heliosphere includes the atmosphere of the sun which extends at least that far. An AU is 1.495978707E10 meters so a radio/laser/gravity baseline that reached the Heliopause would be about 123*1.495978707E10 = 1.8400538E13 meters.
For mm waves (1E-3 meters) the angular resolution would be 1E-3 meters/1.8400538E13 = 8.2220422E-13 (meters/meter) or 822.20422 femtoMeters/meter
At a distance of 100 Light Years = 100 years*2.9972458E8 (m/s) * 365.25 (days/year)*86400 (seconds/day) = 9.45858841E17 meters that would be
8.2220422E-13 (meters/meter)*9.45858841E17 meters =
777.689131 Kilometers
Modular nuclear facilities can be compact and self maintaining and built to last 10000 years. For a one time thing, probably worth it.
Search Google for (How many stars within 100 light years? )
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CA%BBOumuamua
Richard Collins, The Internet Foundation
