An interesting paper from Turyshev (et al.) about the economics of smallsats and solar sails to explore the solar system and beyond.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.14917
"Fast, cost-effective, and maneuverable sailcraft that may travel outside the ecliptic plane open new opportunities for affordable solar system exploration, with great promise for heliophysics, planetary science, and astrophysics. Such missions could be modularized to reach different destinations with different sets of instruments. Benefiting from this progress, we present the "Sundiver" concept, offering novel possibilities for the science community."
#solar_sail #sundiver #small_satellite #solar_system #interstellar_travel

On the edge of Sci-Fi:

Project Lyra – Exploring Interstellar Objects
https://i4is.org/what-we-do/technical/project-lyra/

Project Lyra develops concepts for reaching interstellar objects such as 1I / 'Oumuamua and 2I / Borisov with a spacecraft, based on near-term technologies. But what is an interstellar object?

#interstellar_travel #project_lyra #i4is