Put . At emission, , the middle segment gives
The planet is at , so the inward light signal takes coordinate time
Its arrival time on the planet is therefore . Subtract this from the mission's return time :
For large at fixed acceleration this tends to . With the Earth-gravity value above, the wait is approximately two years, despite the millions of planet-years elapsed since departure in part (i).
Figure 1.
An accelerated round trip and the midpoint signal received before reunion
. Original spacetime diagram at omega T=1.2 for visibility. The planet follows the vertical line. The mission sends an inward light signal from its most distant point; the signal reaches the planet before the final reunion. Both axes use the same dimensionless spacetime scale. Details.

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