In the last months of 2004 there has been an announcement that autonomous sophisticated computer systems that can analyze and self repair are being developed so that tight control of these systems would not be necessary for long term performance. Once this development reaches practicality it would seem possible to dispatch interstellar probes to investigate the many extra-solar planets that have recently been discovered.
Obviously this requires a long term attitude that is not evident in current government scientific policies. It might require hundreds of years for any results to be forthcoming since interstellar travel requires speed not yet attained to gain reasonable results. But An ion engine recently has been tested successfully and the capabilities do seem to be forthcoming.
If economic probes could be developed to be mass produced, massive launches would endow a fascinating legacy to future generations.
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The site interstellar.org is under construction. Many proposals have been published in fact/tech sections of science fiction magazines. Google interstellar probe for some. NASA also has a plan for a probe out to 200AU. Not interstellar, but a long way.
Historians will probably say that that advances begin when people start talking about them. In that view, the interstellar probe began many years ago. And continues as long as people talk about how to do it.
Would exploratory interstellar probes require some sort of communication infrastructure? Would there need to be other machines in deep space that take the signal from the exploratory probe, and amplify it so that it can be detected by earth?
Discussed elsewhere in WN, the fastest means of interstellar travel will likely be the solar sail. Capable of reaching speeds approaching that of 10%-25% of the speed of light, it would still take thousands, or tens of thousands of years to reach the destinations mentioned. Such trips would be one way only, and the civilization that sent them may well be dust by the time the probe reaches the nearest of them.
Wait for someone to construct the Starship Enterprise with matter-antimatter energy and warp drive, or send "generation ships."
The point of the concept is that dispatch of these probes in the near future is a legacy to our future or whatever intelligent life probably succeeds us. This type of generosity is probably not acceptable to some limited minds who cannot conceive of the short life of any particular species relative to cosmic time measurements.