Private consortium plans telescope to find planets in Alpha Centauri

New York Times : On 11 October a consortium of nonprofits announced a plan to build a half-meter space telescope to look for potentially habitable planets in the Alpha Centauri system. The data from the telescope would allow astronomers to closely analyze any planets found and potentially determine atmospheric composition. Alpha Centauri is a binary system that is located just 4.37 light-years away. Only the star Proxima Centauri, which is now known to host an Earth-sized planet in its habitable zone, is closer. However, the Alpha Centauri stars are much more Sun-like than Proxima Centauri. Jon Morse of the BoldlyGo Institute, one of the organizations leading the consortium, says that the telescope would likely cost between $25 million and $50 million, about one-third the price of a comparable NASA project. The plan is to raise funds through major donations, though the group may also turn to crowdsourcing.