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its an alien prove designed to do flybys of solar systems , scan and measure all bodies in them and beam the information back to the home system , probably using pulsars for navigation ,star flybys for power and has its exterior coated with materials mimicking the surface of regular asteroids to void detection.
it does basically to star systems what voyager did to planets , using the stars as gravity assists and bouncing from system to system with minimal maneuvers to adjust the gravity assist .
we'll be building similar (but more low-tech) spacecraft within the next 100 years . gaining as much intel as possible on neighboring systems (~25 ly around us) thorough probes and very large imaging devices (like hives of spacecraft acting as one giant telescope).
