[nategri]

This is insanely cool. I had no idea this was possible.

If I'm reading right the spacecraft would have to be placed at about 600-850 AU from the sun to take advantage of the solar gravity lens. For reference, Pluto's orbit is located at (roughly) 40 AU.

[nerfhammer]

could we use New Horizons to do it? ...I suppose not, it's taken 10 years for it to go 40AU so for it to go to 400AU it would take 100 years...

[simonh]

You'd need a specialised imaging sensor and optics assembly. New Horizons is optimized for relatively close range planetary survey work. Also it's communications array isn't anywhere near up to maintaining the link back home from that far.

[rbanffy]

You'd probably need to pack a multi-mode propulsion system. Launch it so it can get a gravity assist from the Sun, deploy a solar sail after closest approach (or when safe) and ride the light pressure from the Sun to get as much delta-v as you can, then ditch the sail and fire up nuclear-powered electric thrusters for the rest of the trip. Dropping the solar sail part may be a good idea if its weight could be better used as propellant for the ion drive.

Then you have a hope of making the trip in a couple decades

[londons_explore]

Presumably when you get to the right distance, you'd want to circularise your orbit so you can use your new solar lens to look in many different directions.

Even more dV and time required to do that...

[rbanffy]

Yes... There will be a lot of braking involved, but we may start doing observations well before it reaches the intended circular orbit. I wonder how much such a mission would cost.

[everdev]

But only ~65 hours to send the data back, not bad.