If we send telescopes out to 4 light days we can use the gravity of the sun to amplify the power of telescopes by 100 billion times. Although we can build larger telescopes with higher resolution near to Earth, the telescopes that are sent out to gravitational lensing regions would resolve much faster. In some cases, it would take millions of years or more to resolve an image while the gravitational lens telescope could resolve in weeks.
For the next decade or two, the challenge will be to get a single one-meter telescope out to the right spot. The right spot is a very thin line on the opposite side of the sun to the exoplanet or target imaging object. The best lensing areas are out at 650 times further than the distance from the Earth to the Sun.
The first missions will probably be laser pushed solar sails or solar sails that slingshot around the sun. These would try to reach the gravitational lens area in about ten to twenty years. They would need to get to twenty times the speed of the Voyager spacecraft. They would travel along the optimal line for looking at another solar system.
There are about 14,000 solar systems within 100 light-years and 250,000 solar systems within 250 light-years.
The ideal situation would be to improve propulsion so that the telescopes could get to 4+ light days from Earth and then slow down and stay in the optimal observation areas. We should then mass produce telescopes dedicated for each solar system. We should even have many telescopes along the optimal sightline so that various parts of the target solar system can stay under constant observation and exploration. Each set of telescopes would like probes of the other solar system. There should be at least one telescope for each planet and some for the moons and other objects of the other solar systems.
14,000 solar systems with 100 dedicated telescopes for each solar system would be 1.4 million telescopes.250,000 solar systems with 1000 dedicated telescopes for each solar system would be 250 million telescopes.
A mothership could carry the hundred or thousand telescopes to the specific gravitational lens line and then offload the 100 or thousands of telescopes.
The telescopes would gather megapixel images of everything in the target solar system. We would be able to watch the weather and measure the atmosphere of the exoplanets and objects.
There would be no need for starshades. The focal line for the stars would be thousands of miles away. There would only be the need for coronagraphs to blot out our own sun. The images would have to be reconstructed from the Einstein ring created by the gravity of our sun.
If tens of megawatt laser arrays beamed power to sails powering lithium-ion drives, then the spacecraft could maneuver and decelerate to hold positions on the lensing lines.
This would be about 1000 times closer than actually sending probes to the other solar systems. It would take one million times less energy.
Arxiv- Recognizing the Value of the solar Gravitational Lens for Direct Multipixel Imaging and Spectroscopy of an Exoplanet.
International Journal of Modern Physics D – Putting gravity to work: Imaging of exoplanets with the solar gravitational lens
SOURCES- NASA, TVIWWritten By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com
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