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The_Solar_Oracle t1_jd6jkq0 wrote

Reply to comment by teehuis in A New Mission Will Search for Habitable Planets at Alpha Centauri by Aeromarine_eng

Excluding the fact that we can certainly make faster probes, the study of habitable exoplanets is not and never has been contingent on the ability of people to visit them. We can still gather data and that data is still useful.

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danielravennest t1_jd90e6s wrote

In particular, the Sun is a gravitational lens. If you travel about 800 AU in the opposite direction from Alpha Centauri, you can look back and see what is there in great detail, because the lens is 2 million km in diameter. One reason to be that far out is to make it easy to block out the Sun itself, including prominances and the solar corona.

Centauri is 276,000 AU, so using the Sun is a lot easier mission.

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