Kwame Asante

Kwame Asante leads lightsail research at Kepler Yards on L5 Lagrange Station. He is the chief scientist of the Eidolon Lightsail Prototype, Halcyon's experimental craft designed to reach Proxima Centauri b, roughly 265,000 AU away, on laser light alone.

Kwame's team designed the Eidolon's 640-metre reflective sail and the phased laser array that pushes it to a cruise speed of 14,800 km/s. Before Eidolon he worked on solar-sail station-keeping for the Polaris Relay Tender.

He speaks frequently about the physics and ethics of crewed interstellar flight.

Kwame previously led an astrophysics research group studying exoplanet atmospheres, which first drew him to Proxima Centauri b. He chairs Halcyon's interstellar ethics advisory panel and is working with the open data team to publish Eidolon test data so that researchers anywhere can examine the results of each sail deployment and laser-pushed acceleration trial.