speaking of planetary exploration, here's one of my flash fictions from last year you can share with him if you like.
Planetary Survey S-2732-m4
by
Kenny A. Chaffin
All Rights Reserved © 2014 Kenny A. Chaffin
The survey ship focused on m4 as it was the only planet in the habitable range. The long dead signals had come from this planetary system but none in recent times. The planet closest to the star was too hot to harbor life and if it had ever had an atmosphere it would have been short-lived, likely burned and blown away by the stellar wind shortly after the planet’s formation. The next two were shrouded in toxic gases and clouds causing their surfaces to be almost hot and deadly as the first. The more distant planets were gas giants and frigid moons. That left m4 for examination. Following standard procedure they proceeded with a full preliminary scan of the small planet, recording visual, radar, sonar and ultrasound images and maps of the surface. All data fed directly into the computers for analysis, categorization and evaluation which would continue for days following the data collection.
After a dozen days of orbiting, shifting orbits, scanning, mapping, sorting and sifting it was clear there was no sign of life, no intelligently created structures, no cities, no evidence of agriculture. Everything was natural, normal and had been that way for a very long time – billions of years.
A thin atmosphere existed but even here it was being stripped away by the stellar wind. There were signs of ancient geological activity and erosion by water or other liquid yielding channels and flows but nothing recent and channels and erosion were tempered by on-going filling and shifting of wind-blown sands. Just as the crew was ready to write it off as one more lifeless system there was a strong reflected signal, an anomaly from the ground piercing EM waves. Nothing was visible optically. Whatever it was, was beneath the shifting sands and dust of the planetary surface.
A sterile reconnaissance drone was dropped which carefully excavated the artifact, first exposing a mast with some type of sensors and then the rest. It was clearly of intelligent design, a silver wheeled metallic machine and clearly not of this world since it was one of a kind. Perhaps a reconnaissance drone similar to the one they had used to excavate it. It was assumed that it must have been abandoned or failed or perhaps gotten stuck in the loose soil and been gradually covered over by the windswept dust and sand. Compositional and mechanical analysis along with the erosion and decay of its exposed components indicated that it was approximately a billion years old. The question was where were its masters, the ones who sent or left this small six-wheeled rover on this dry red planet?