User:EarthPerson/Voyagers (novel)

Voyagers is a 1981 novel by American author Ben Bova.

It was followed by The Alien Within' (1986) and Star Brothers (1990).

Characters

 * Keith Stoner
 * Jo Camerata
 * Big Mac McDermott
 * Commander Tuttle - Stoner's Navy liasion
 * Russian linguist
 * Willie Wilson - the Urban Evangelist
 * Nikolai Federenko - Soviet cosmonaut and veteran of three previous spaceflights.

Plot Summary
Keith Stoner, a former NASA astronaut is working at a University in the radio astronomy department when radio signals are detected from the planet Jupiter. NASA uses its Big Eye orbiting telescope, possibly based on the then-unnamed Hubble Space Telescope to visually observe Jupiter. Stoner was a shuttle astronaut who placed Big Eye in orbit. An artifical object initially believed to be launched out of Jupiter's gravity well is detected. Stoner is pulled into a top secret project headed up by the US Navy to work on this issue and to keep the information from the gneral public. Later, when the object is determined to be an alien spacecraft and to have originated from outside the solar system, the radio transmissions stop and the object changes course, heading in the direction of Earth. It will pass close enough that Stoner wants to attempt a rendezvous with the object.

Soviet Cosmonaut and American Astronaut who rendezvous with an alien spacecraft some 1 million miles from Earth. Craft is a standard Soyuz docked to three other larger modules assembled at Salyut 6 along with a fourth "tanker" module to link up with just prior to alien encounter. Stoner's ride, as the first American on a Soyuz, predates Norm Thagard's actual trip on Soyuz TM-21 by 14 years. Linked modules may be similar to Cosmos 1267 that actually docked with Salyut 6 and Cosmos 1443 and Cosmos 1686 which docked to Salyut 7.