In 2012, Israeli billionaire Yuri Milner became a Giving Pledge signatory. He also co-founded the Breakthrough Foundation and the Breakthrough Prize. Then, in 2015, the Eureka Manifesto author launched the Breakthrough Initiatives with Stephen Hawking. These five space science programs include Listen, Starshot, Message, Discuss, and Watch.
One of the initiatives, Breakthrough Watch, is searching for signs of alien life on Earth-like planets around Alpha Centauri. The program has also announced that it will fund phase two of the TOLIMAN mission. This specialized space telescope project could help astronomers detect exoplanets that orbit nearby stars.
The TOLIMAN Mission: Is There Life on Other Planets?
Since 2021, the University of Sydney and other partners have collaborated on the TOLIMAN (Telescope for Orbit Locus Interferometric Monitoring of our Astronomical Neighbourhood) mission. The project involves the design, creation, and launch of a custom space telescope.
Designed for stability and precision, the telescope will search for exoplanets in our closest star systems. The instrument will probe stars’ “Goldilocks zones.” These zones are where temperatures could allow for liquid surface water on rocky planets.
Conventional telescopes concentrate starlight into a focused beam. However, the TOLIMAN telescope features a unique design that will make it easier to find exoplanets around nearby stars. Its custom mirror spreads starlight in a flower-like pattern. This pattern helps astronomers detect the “small wobbles” a planet would make in the star’s motion.
Funded by Breakthrough Watch, phase two of the TOLIMAN mission will include the design, build, and integration of the spacecraft with the telescope. To complete this phase of the project, the Breakthrough Watch and University of Sydney teams will work with EnduroSat.
EnduroSat is a Bulgarian aerospace manufacturer that specializes in designing “NanoSats.” These miniature satellites offer fast download speeds of more than 125 megabits per second. This capability is crucial for an ongoing observation mission like TOLIMAN.
EnduroSat CEO Raycho Raychev has called the project’s challenges “enormous.” The TOLIMAN mission will push the company’s “engineering efforts to the extreme.”
Yuri Milner: The Giving Pledge and the Breakthrough Initiatives
Yuri Milner is a physicist turned entrepreneur and venture capitalist. After signing the Giving Pledge with his wife Julia, he vowed to donate the majority of his wealth to philanthropic causes.
The Milners established the Breakthrough Foundation to follow through on their Giving Pledge. The Foundation finances a group of space science projects called the Breakthrough Initiatives.
The Breakthrough Initiatives explore fundamental questions about life in the Universe, such as:
- Does primitive or intelligent life exist beyond Earth?
- Are there habitable worlds outside the solar system?
- Could we one day travel to the stars?
- Can humanity think and act together as a unified galactic civilization?
The Breakthrough Foundation also helps fund the Breakthrough Prize. Julia and Yuri Milner co-founded the Breakthrough Prize in 2012 with Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan, Mark Zuckerberg, and Anne Wojcicki. The Breakthrough Prize celebrates the ground-breaking discoveries of mathematicians and scientists.
Eureka Manifesto: Our Cosmic Neighbors
Yuri Milner discusses the possibility of alien civilizations in his short book Eureka Manifesto. Most astrobiologists agree that “primitive cellular life” is everywhere in the cosmos. On average, every star has at least one planet. There could be many billions of rocky, Earth-sized worlds in our galaxy. And there are around a trillion galaxies in the observable Universe.
But we won’t find out if we’re alone unless we turn our technological eyes and ears up to the waiting cosmos and start searching.
In Eureka Manifesto, Yuri Milner argues that humanity should unite to explore and understand the Universe. As the TOLIMAN mission and Breakthrough Initiatives prove, we can overcome challenges when we work together.
Learn more about Yuri Milner’s Breakthrough Initiatives.