Last week, an international team of scientists and businessmen launched a project they hope can answer that question. They announced plans for a huge space exploration program. Its goal is to find alien life in space. The team includes British physicist Stephen Hawking, Russian-born billionaire Yuri Milner and American Mark Zuckerberg, who founded Facbook. Their project is called Breakthrough Spaceshot. It will develop and build thousands of robotic vehicles that can speed through space. Their first goal is to explore the near est star system, Alpha Centauri. It is about 40 trillion kilometers or 4.37 light years away from Earth. Once launched a spacecraft would have to travel 20 years to get there. The way they will make it happen is like something from a science fiction story. Crews on Earth would use powerful laser beams to power extremely small vehicles through space. These spacecraft would travel much farther than any other spacecraft built to date.