NASA’s New Engine To Reach Light Speed

When it comes to space exploration, we as a scientific community have always been able to adapt and overcome any obstacles. We found a way to peer into the cosmos. We landed a man on the moon. We’ve sent probes beyond our solar system. We did all these great feats of engineering in a span of a couple of decades. Despite these achievements, there has always been a seemingly impossible task that we only dreamed about; light speed.

You see, we can study exoplanets and send probes out into the infinite beyond, but we’ve never been able to actually see the wonders of the universe up close. Even the nearest galactic neighbor, Proxima Centauri b, is 4.25 light-years away. With our current technology, it would take us 6300 years to reach it. The tragic reality is that everything worth studying in our universe is beyond our lifetime. Or so we thought. NASA recently claimed that their new space engine can reach 99% of the speed of light. If this is true, a new reality of space travel just opened its doors.