The mission concept presented here assumes a number of developments in spacecraft systems, including low-power avionics, advanced power systems, and phased-array Ka-band telecommunications. Many of these developments are also being counted on for other future NASA missions.

The most critical technology needed to carry out this mission is, of course, solar sail propulsion. Although solar sails have been studied extensively, they have never been flown in space (although a large ~20 m sail was deployed on MIR). Indeed, spacecraft velocities of the kind envisioned here will require rather advanced sails, necessitating new, light-weight reflective material, as well as developments in packaging, deployment and control. These developments will have to be tested in one or more flight demonstrations before a sail with a radius of 200 m and an areal density of ~1 g/m² will be ready for flight. An aggressive solar-sail development program is therefore required.