Deep-space missions

Usage examples of probes.

Hesse has already made it clear that he wants to save as many probes as possible for when Raimey gets bigger and starts going deeper in the atmosphere.

Faraday and his helpers far above had done some kind of emscan analysis through one of the probes and suggested he might find a concentration of food plants trapped between layers of extra-fast wind.

There had been some talk about relay probes, he remembered, but nothing ever seemed to have come of it.

Already their probes were spread too thin across the region, scattered strategically around to help Latranesto and the other Qanska make sure no one accidentally wandered into the blast zone.

However, later high-powered probes will probably be used to reach deeper and deeper into space.

We already have the means to launch probes with ion-drive engines that will reach the nearest stars.

Earth, spaceships to the moon, and the first space probes to leave the sun and drift out to the stars.

They could also be used to transmit live TV coverage of space probes, such as a manned landing on Mars.

And a thousand probes could be launched in thirty years, at a cost comparable to that of building a Cyclops complex on Earth.

As mentioned earlier, the Perseans would have had to launch up to five hundred probes to be sure of finding suitable new worlds.

However, unmanned American and Russian satellite probes have discovered that a very small amount of water vapor or ice-crystals does exist in the upper atmosphere of the planet.

Further technical details of probes and interstellar fleets are given in appendix 5.

But though they would still take centuries for worthwhile interstellar voyages, ion engines are available now and could well be used to power automatic reconnaissance probes to alien planets.

In the summer of 1976 it is planned to land NASA Viking probes on Mars.

He worked it out that three of their probes would come down in the ocean and probably sink without trace, and the other would land in Yellowstone National Park.