Could gram-scale spacecraft be the key to studying a black hole, up close?
Credit: Credit: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. da Silva/M. Zamani
It’s not possible today—and it might even take the better part of a century—but, according to astrophysicist Cosimo Bambi, sending a research mission to a black hole is more achievable than one might think. Published in iScience, Bambi’s paper claims the mission, “although very speculative and extremely challenging, is not completely unrealistic.” It would also revolutionize our understanding of black holes, gravity, and maybe the universe itself.
Bambi proposes that scientists create “nanocraft” that require very little energy to accelerate and can be fitted with a light-catching sail. This sail would weigh around a gram and surround a “craft” weighing roughly the same.
The mission would involve using a high-powered laser to accelerate the little probe into a one-way ballistic trajectory. Once launched, there’s no ability to change course, but since the idea is to head straight towards a black hole anyway, last-minute changes in course were never going to be an option.
This graphic shows the sizing of the proposed nanocraft.
Credit: Bambi, 2025. DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2025.113142
The goal would be to accelerate the tiny craft to one-third of the speed of light. By my calculations, that’s over 500 times faster than the current fastest probe, the Parker Space Probe. The Parker probe, however, weighs 685 kg—about 350,000 times heavier than Bambi proposes this probe will be.
Even if Bambi’s probe becomes reality, we’d still need to find a black hole roughly 20-25 light years away. For reference, the closest currently known is over 1500 light years away, but the black hole could very well be a tiny one. Though it’s doubtful that a meaningfully sized black hole would be so nearby, a micro-black hole very well could be.
If we found one, the missions would take 80-100 years to complete, with the last 20-25 years being the time it takes for the transmission to return to Earth.
Physically studying black holes will always be difficult and time-consuming. The fact that we are alive to imagine such a mission proves that any meaningfully large black holes are, thankfully, a long way off. That means any attempt to get to one must involve long-distance travel.
The paper presents a number of ideas for finding candidate black holes to visit.
Credit: Bambi, 2025. DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2025.113142
Bambi’s ideal experiment would interrogate gravity, and through that relativity…but honestly, it’s a bit difficult to even speculate about the possible applications for data that would be so novel. We don’t even know how long it might be possible for a craft to keep transmitting as it approaches the event horizon.
Bambi claims that the technology to create and accelerate his craft could exist within the next 20-30 years, but that’s likely to be the lesser wait. Even if we could engineer the probe, the mission would still need a candidate black hole close enough to be reached. As of right now, there’s very little movement towards being able to detect such small-scale, nearby singularities.
These pure thought experiments are very fun, but they also help us take stock of the overall progress that science is making. Truly ambitious ideas like this might be far-fetched overall, but it’s worth noting how surprisingly achievable many parts of them are, too.