The goal of the project is to use the Sun as a lens to look into the far reaches of the universe.
The project, led by Slava Turyshev at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, received $2 million in funding from the Institute for Advanced Concepts back in 2020.
Turyshev collaborated with the Aerospace Corporation, a California-based nonprofit that operates federally funded research, to investigate the feasibility of the idea.
An epic journey that could take up to 25 years is what they propose.
A straight line would be formed by the assembled satellites, the Sun and a distant exoplanet target. The satellites would be able to see far beyond what they have been able to do so far by virtue of the Sun's gravity.
That point is 1000 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun, which is several times the distance NASA's Voyager 1 probe has traveled over the course of 44 years.
The solar sail would be used to cover the distance.
A solar sail takes advantage of the tiny amount of radiation pressure exerted by sunlight on large "sails" or mirrors to slowly accelerate to high speeds.
The tech has never been tested over long distances.
Turyshev and his colleagues argue in their paper that we could look into a different star system without having to go there ourselves.
The researchers think that it is worth the effort.
The team concludes that it is the only way to learn about exosolar sister planets.
There is a mission to reach the solar magnification lens in 30 years.
NASA has released an image of the most distant star ever seen.
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