TIME

Interstellar Travel

Speculative Concept

A thin reflective light sail and a small probe drifting through deep space toward a distant golden star, with the Milky Way behind.

The FutureInterstellar Travel

The next star, imagined.

Spacecraft could one day travel to other star systems.

Voyager 1 has entered interstellar space, yet the nearest other star is more than a thousand times farther than any spacecraft has traveled. No vehicle that could reach it is known to be buildable.

A speculative concept with no date, drawn as a dashed line running forward from now.

Era
The Future
Period
Speculative · Undated
Edition
1/1
Status
Not Released
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Background artwork

An original illustration generated for TIME with an AI image model, 2026. It depicts an imagined scene. It is not a photograph of a real place or event, and it is not a prediction.