A Mysterious Journey to the End of Space

year 2236 space exploration is flourishing and astronauts are the most respected professionals in the solar system yet despite all technical advances no sign of extraterrestrial life has been observed or rather wasn't until two years ago the gsa global space agency registered a repeating signal like no other it was coming from a galaxy billions of light years away and moving the decision was made to construct a one-of-a-kind spaceship exceeding the speed of light to explore the signal today it's finally ready and has been given a fitting name hope but there's a problem to reach his full

speed it has to be piloted manually and these four individuals are now going on board the ship for the most important mission in history perhaps never to come back the astronauts are in their seats engines are starting ground control begins the countdown five four three two one the hope starts off the ground borne by its rocket carrier the sky is overcast but that's only for the first few seconds and here we are in the clear blue above the clouds our ship is leaving the atmosphere now getting ready for the first of its many ordeals the

space debris even today there's still too much of it floating in orbit the pilots are skilled though so there's almost no chance oh no look at that huge chunk of metal coming straight at them who barely made it now that we're through the hope is on its own and its deep space engines turn on the first solid object on our way is of course the moon located 239 000 miles away it's the earth's only satellite and its closest celestial body to get here by airplane you'd need 17 full days and a lot more air to

fly with luckily we're not on a plane gaining more speed the astronauts reach mars the fourth planet from the sun it's home to the tallest mountain in the solar system olympus moths it's so huge that it's visible even from space leaving the red planet behind the hope approaches the second obstacle the asteroid belt oh careful now it's nimble so it easily dodges the space rocks look see that huge thing over there it's not a planet it's ceres the largest near-earth asteroid it's over 600 miles in diameter more than twice the length of the grand canyon

oh shucks the pilots must have been lost in admiration at the giant smaller asteroids are closing in on them they're almost hit near miss they're now safely out of the belt and accelerating again next stop is jupiter the largest planet of our system a gas giant its diameter is about 89 000 miles which makes it more than 11 times bigger than earth look at that enormous swirl on its surface see that's a hurricane that's been going on for centuries and it alone is twice the size of our home planet now our pilots were a bit

to the side and reach out of saturn's famous rings they're made of ice and stone and span as wide as the moon is from the earth what was that a comet whoa close call those tailed things are essentially huge chunks of ice hurtling through space and one of them has flown inches from our hero spacecraft reaching sub-light speed the ship rolls past the orbit of two other planets now too far and unseen to the first dwarf planet of the solar system pluto not far away you can see charon the largest of its five moons it's

so big that it doesn't only orbit around pluto but makes it kind of dance around cheron too almost at the speed of light now the spacecraft races straight into the kuiper belt the second asteroid belt on its way out of the system chunks of ice float past and the astronauts have to be very careful veering among them careful one of the rogue asteroids has scraped the ship at such speed a more serious impact could have been devastating but even a scrape like this is pretty bad they dropped the speed to do some repairs while the

two pilots are gingerly leading the hope out of the belt but what's that huge thing blocking the view oh it's eris another dwarf planet the size of pluto which means we're safely outside and will soon be approaching the limits of the solar system just one last obstacle on the way the oort cloud quiet now the moment has finally calm the cloud is too far away to reach it even at the speed of light it will take a year at best so the hope is preparing its state-of-the-art skip drive ready now in the blink of an

eye the hope is right at the inner limits of the oort cloud the last asteroid belt there is in the solar system it's not as hazardous as the previous two because asteroids are much farther apart but skipping through them is still not an option so the ship is carefully making its way among the icy rocks shoot another comet and another one two comets at a time both somehow attracted to the spacecraft no huh they're alive oh i see the comets collided with each other just behind the hope and the blast simply pushed it forward boy

you guys had me worried you know but now we're finally out of the boundaries of the solar system the greater space begins and it's safe to skip again the hope jumps several light years further ahead and we're now looking at the sun's closest star neighbor the proxima centauri and its two big brothers alpha centauri a and b it's still unknown if there's any life on the planets of this star system the skip drive is getting blue again time for some action now it's making a series of jumps each taking the hope several thousand light years

further into the cosmos the scale is getting broader and now we're looking at the milky way galaxy in all its glory while still being within it isn't it beautiful but there's no time to waste with each skip we're making bigger distance still and wait what's wrong why did we stop is that yes we're now being witnesses to the demise of a star that stream of light is its energy and the bright disc that attracts it is called the accretion disk the ring of matter and energy swirling around a supermassive black hole the astronauts are lucky

to have stopped in time otherwise they would have been spaghettified adjusting the course setting the skip drive and another series of interstellar jumps takes the hope out of the milky way and into the neighboring galaxy andromeda and here we're at a safe distance watching the incredible the birth of a galaxy cluster thousands of light years away but big enough to be clearly visible from here hundreds upon hundreds of galaxies are being born right now and at the center of it all is another black hole it's the core of a new cluster weakened and thus helping

stars to appear and now finally the skip drive is ready to take the astronauts to their point of destination the mysterious signal they've been receiving it ever since leaving the earth and it's growing stronger with each skip now they expect it to be even clearer because the next jump will take them a billion light years ahead we're now in a weird place there are several stars all circling around a small black hole and each having at least a couple of planets orbiting them look one of the stars got too close and a fountain of lights

spurted toward the black hole but then the star ripped itself free and continued its slow movement here the signal is stronger but not as strong as expected by far it's moved further much further there's no choice but to skip again and who knows where to it's dark and quiet too much so in fact complete darkness and deafening silence and then the wave of light engulfs the spacecraft and in the glow they see it with incredulous eyes they're at the edge of everything the edge of the universe as we know it there's a wall of dancing

light not unlike the northern lights on earth but all shades of red and yellow instead of green and it's rapidly moving away carrying with it the signal which has become very strong all of a sudden all this time it was a chase after the end of all that is and now there's no choice but to pursue the goal until the very end the crew braces themselves and skip there outside our universe