The end of US manned spaceflight

is currently scheduled for November. Here's a bit of fiction to commemorate this historic occasion:

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In 2058 the first manned mission to Mars ended in tragedy when the lightsail failed to deploy for the return trip to Earth. Attempts to free it failed, and damaged it beyond repair, stranding the 6 "Arenauts" in orbit around Mars. With no way to return to the surface or to Earth, each sent a final message home, then they bled off the cabin pressure, choosing the relatively gentle death of hypoxia over dehydration, starvation, or hypothermia . Citing the costs and dangers of interplanetary travel, further missions to Mars were canceled.

In 2069, funding for the second International Space Station was eliminated due to "excessive costs with no tangible return", and it was deorbited in 2071. Plans for ISS III never even got into the actual design stage.

Unmanned launchers had replaced manned vehicles for putting satellites in orbit back in the 2010s, and tele-operated robots soon replaced astronauts for satellite repair and retrieval.

By 2080, the era of manned spaceflight was over. Dwindling resources and increasing population pressure prevented Man from ever returning to space.

Almost a thousand years later, a disturbance outside the orbit of Neptune went undetected. No tracking station still operated to detect the burst of energy, and none of the great telescopes remained operational to track the giant object that fell inward past the outer planets. With careful use of gravity slingshotting and an immense lightsail, it orbited each of the inner planets in turn.

Some of the people living a feudal existence on the third planet noted a strange star that shifted across the heavens, and were enthralled by this promise of a new beginning, or terrified by this omen of disaster.

The probe orbited each rocky planet in turn, then worked its way back out to the outer system. Once it was far enough from the sun's mass, it folded the lightsail and transited back to highspace, that strange realm where neither Einstein nor Newton held sway, and transmitted its report to its builders, a quarter of the way around the galactic disk:

System 430307 survey completed. Third planet has intelligent life, formerly of a high technological level but now decayed to natural energy only. No distinguishing characteristics. Survey team not recommended. Awaiting instructions.

The reply came a few seconds later:

Report received. Recommendation filed. Continue to next system.