British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking on Wednesday announced an interstellar exploration project to send tiny, ultralight spacecraft to another star system on Weibo, pushing already animated online scientific discussions to new heights just one day after the renowned scientist joined the Chinese version of Twitter.

Hawking's post introducing the Breakthrough Starshot program, which was unveiled Tuesday in New York, received over 80,000 reposts and some 350,000 likes within 12 hours.

The $100 million program was announced on the 55th anniversary of the first human space flight by Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. The project aims to build laser-accelerated unmanned "nanocraft" that can travel at 20 percent of light speed in hopes of completing a flyby mission to the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri, which is four light years away.

The ultralight space probes could "reach Alpha Centauri about 20 years after launch, and send back images of any planets discovered in the system," Hawking said on Weibo on Wednesday morning.

Calling it a "promising" program, Li Miao, dean of the Institute of Astronomy and Space Science at Sun Yat-sen University, told the Global Times that, "Micro aerial vehicles could be the inevitable future development direction of aviation, considering their energy efficiency."

The Breakthrough Starshot program could significantly help popularize science by arousing young people's interest in the discipline, but the project will not be realized in the short term, considering its feasibility and practicability, Pang Zhihao, a research fellow with the Chinese Academy of Space Technology, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

Faced with many technological challenges in fields such as propulsion, telemetry, tracking and command, such a project is less urgent. "The top priority now is to achieve a manned Mars landing," Pang said, noting that the exploration of Mars could contribute to possible immigration in the future.

Li believes the nanocraft project to be a worthy scientific attempt in spite of the difficulties, especially communication challenges, which he said might be a major obstacle.

"If China participates in [the program], the country could make contributions with its laser technologies," Li said.