Cross 4.34 light-years in decades, not millennia.
Cruise at a fifth of light speed with a probe big enough to carry real instruments, not a gram-scale chip.
MissionAlpha Centauri
Our nearest stars, within one lifetime.
Alpha Centauri is a triple system: two Sun-like stars, A and B, and a red dwarf, Proxima, with an Earth-mass planet in its habitable zone. Even the fastest spacecraft ever flown would need thousands of years to get there. SoLeV exists to close that gap to decades.
01/ Objectives
Reach. Stay. Report.
Three goals, in the order a probe would meet them.
Arrive, brake, and stay.
A drive that carries its own energy can slow down. The probe would brake into orbit and keep watching, instead of crossing the system in a few hours.
Send the first close-up of another world home.
Images and data would return by laser, reaching Earth 4.34 years after the probe arrives at Alpha Centauri.
Time to cross 4.34 light-years
Log scale · years at constant speedOn November 18, 2026, after 49 years of flight, Voyager 1 becomes the first spacecraft to reach one light-day from Earth. Alpha Centauri is about 1,590 light-days away. Parker Solar Probe touched 192 km/s near the Sun in 2024, the fastest any spacecraft has flown, but only briefly.
02/ The destination
Alpha Centauri.
Three stars, at least two planets around Proxima, and a possible giant around A. It is the obvious first destination beyond the Sun, and the one we can reach soonest.
Distance
4.34 light-years
About 41 trillion km to A and B, from the most precise modern measurement (the older figure of 4.37 is still widely quoted). Proxima is a little closer, at 4.25.
Stars
Two suns and a red dwarf
A is a G2 star like the Sun, about 8 percent more massive and 1.5 times as luminous. B is a smaller, orange K1 star. They circle each other every 80 years. Proxima, a flaring red dwarf, orbits about 0.2 light-years out.
Proxima b
An Earth-mass world
Found in 2016, it has at least 1.06 Earth masses and circles Proxima every 11.2 days, inside the zone where liquid water could exist. Whether it has an atmosphere is still unknown.
Alpha Cen A
A possible giant planet
In 2025, astronomers reported James Webb Space Telescope evidence of a possible Saturn-mass planet orbiting Alpha Centauri A. It has not been confirmed yet.
Why go
See it up close
New telescopes are joining the search. NASA's Roman Space Telescope, launched in August 2026, could help check the possible giant around A, and TOLIMAN, planned for launch in 2027, is designed to hunt for planets around A and B. Telescopes can find these worlds, but none near Earth can resolve their surfaces. A probe in the system could.
Join/ The mission
Help us get there in our lifetime.
We are gathering physicists, engineers, and backers who want to see another star system up close. Get mission updates, or tell us how you'd like to help.