Tiny rockets are being sent into space to study the universe in the most ambitious space exploration project in history, and it’s being launched by Stephen Hawking, Mark Zuckerberg and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner.

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The $100 million project called ‘Breakthrough Starshot’ will use tiny “nanocraft” flying on sails pushed by beams of light through the universe.

They’ll travel to the Alpha Centauri star system 25 trillion miles (4.37 light years) away — which could take a good 20 years to reach — and will send back pictures which will potentially show worlds that could support life.

Yuri Milner says:

For the first time in human history, we can do more than look at the stars, we can reach them.

Stephen Hawking adds:

Earth is a wonderful place, but it might not last forever.

Breakthrough Starshot is a very exciting first step on that journey.

With light beams, light sails and the lightest spacecraft ever built we can launch a mission to Alpha Centauri within a generation.

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What do you do when you have more money than you know what to do with? You put together $100 million and you create little “nanocrafts” and send them into outer space to hunt for aliens. Sound crazy? Maybe just a bit, but imagine being the person to actually prove that alien life forms exist. Imagine finding another planet out there that could support human life in case Earth keeps going to shit. You would pretty much become a god. And that’s what Zuckerberg, Hawking and this Russian dude are going for here — supreme god status.

Although they might want to meet the woman who took selfies with aliens after she was abducted by them first.