Humanity’s desire to explore deep space continues to inspire new ways to reach places far from home. Using conventional rocket propulsion, traveling to our nearest stellar neighbor, Alpha Centauri, would take thousands of years. Instead, researchers are looking to light as a faster, cheaper, and more sustainable form of propulsion that could enable deep space travel. A team of researchers from Texas A&M University has demonstrated the use of laser beams to lift and steer tiny engineered devices without physical contact. The findings from the recent experiment are published in Newton and have the potential to apply light propulsion as a scalable method that could one day power a mission to Alpha Centauri. Follow the light The idea of using light to propel objects in space isn’t new.…