Proxima Centauri b

I found out about it yesterday, from Paul Gilster's blog, Centauri Dreams.

It had all the right information:

• Link to the new Wikipedia page
• Obligatory homage to Stephen Baxter's SF novel Proxima (so accurate!)
• Reference to Yuri Milner's Breakthrough Starshot project.

The key question: observe it better with giant space telescopes (maybe a new push for the FOCAL mission using the sun as a gravitational lens) .. or send a probe?

Might a country (the US or China, say?) embark upon a high-prestige, multi-decade-long programme to send such a mission?

It encounters that old starflight paradox: the later launches - so much more technologically advanced - overtake the first ones.

I think it's possible that the youngest children on Earth might live to see close-in imaging of this planet .. and/or a mission that we might have figured out by then how to slow down.

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Related: this sad little tale from Alastair Reynolds.