In the past decade, the discovery of exoplanets has sparked new interests in the idea of interstellar travel and exploration. Despite various proposals for probe concepts and relevant technologies, there is a lack of extensive literature on viable exploration strategies for journeys beyond a single star system. Such exploration strategies might not only have implications on technology development strategies for achieving interstellar exploration but could also enrich existing models for galactic exploration feeding into solutions of the Fermi Paradox. This article presents optimal strategies for the exploration of a large number of near-by stars, using a dedicated, novel methodology, which sets it apart from existing literature: For the first time, the mission design problem of interstellar exploration is redefined as a bi-objective multi-vehicle open routing problem with profits. It is tackled by an adapted hybrid multi-objective genetic algorithm, which is further improved and modified according to the problem characteristics (e.g. large search space). The overall mission model assumes probes traveling on straight trajectories, utilizing flybys, and maintaining an average velocity of 10% of the speed of light. Surpassing prior research that typically relies on statistical models or restricted star data, the star models are founded on the second Gaia data release (Gaia DR2), which represents the most extensive star catalogue to the date of this study and is employed for the first time in the context of interstellar exploration. The resulting star model contains a maximum of 10,000 stars within a spherical region around Sol, covering a distance of 110 light years.

中文翻译：

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探索邻近恒星的最佳策略

在过去的十年中，系外行星的发现引发了人们对星际旅行和探索的新兴趣。尽管对探测器概念和相关技术提出了各种建议，但仍缺乏关于单星系统之外的可行探索策略的大量文献。这种探索策略不仅可能对实现星际探索的技术开发策略产生影响，而且还可以丰富现有的银河探索模型，为费米悖论的解决方案提供帮助。本文提出了探索大量邻近恒星的最佳策略，采用了一种专用的、新颖的方法，这使其有别于现有文献：首次将星际探索的任务设计问题重新定义为双-具有利润的目标多车辆开放路径问题。它是通过适应的混合多目标遗传算法来解决的，该算法根据问题特征（例如大搜索空间）进一步改进和修改。整个任务模型假设探测器沿直线轨迹行进，利用飞越，并保持平均速度为光速的 10%。恒星模型超越了通常依赖统计模型或有限恒星数据的先前研究，恒星模型建立在第二个盖亚数据版本（Gaia DR2）上，它代表了迄今为止最广泛的恒星目录，并且是首次使用在星际探索的背景下。由此产生的恒星模型在太阳周围的球形区域内最多包含 10,000 颗恒星，覆盖距离为 110 光年。