The world’s collective imagination to answer the age-old question, “Are we alone,” has been reignited now that we understand exoplanets – planets in orbit around stars other than Earth’s Sun – are not uncommon. There’s an increased urgency to develop capabilities for directly photographing exoplanets around nearby stars and to characterize their surface conditions and, Alpha Centauri, being the nearest star system to our own, has understandably become a focal point of current scientific study.