Questions about Breakthrough Initiatives

Short answers, pulled from the story.

When did Stephen Hawking announce the Breakthrough Initiatives program?

Stephen Hawking announced the Breakthrough Initiatives program on the 20th of July 2015 at London's Royal Society. Yuri Milner provided the funding to make this vision real and the program aimed to last for at least ten years.

What is the total budget allocated to Breakthrough Listen operations starting in January 2016?

Breakthrough Listen began its operations with one hundred million dollars in dedicated funding in January 2016. The project utilizes the Green Bank Observatory and the Parkes Observatory to scan the skies for artificial signals while employing the Automated Planet Finder to observe visible light from distant targets.

How much money does the Breakthrough Message competition offer to participants designing a digital message?

The Breakthrough Message program launched a competition offering a prize pool of one million US dollars. Participants sought to design a digital message representative of both humanity and planet Earth without transmitting any signal until a global debate occurred among high-level science and political leaders.

Who leads the Breakthrough Starshot project that aims to send probes toward Alpha Centauri?

Pete Worden leads the Breakthrough Starshot project which was announced on the 12th of April 2016 as a one hundred million dollar effort. Each probe named StarChip weighs only several grams yet travels at twenty percent the speed of light using ground-based lasers reaching up to one hundred gigawatts.

When did NASA sign a collaboration agreement with Breakthrough Initiatives regarding Saturn's moon Enceladus?

NASA signed a collaboration agreement with Breakthrough Initiatives in September 2018 to explore Saturn's moon Enceladus. This mission concept aims to study plumes ejecting from the moon's warm ocean beneath its southern ice crust where the ice shell measures between two and five kilometers in thickness.