← Edition 001Possible · speculative fictionEXPEDITION 01
THE SMALLEST POSSIBLE SPACE PROGRAM

A whole world.
Just outside.

Six centimetres tall. Eight units of energy.
A civilization-defining amount of moss.

Choose a destination, explorer and instrument. Get a short fictional field log explaining your tradeoffs.

Imaginary miniature robots explore a garden birdbath.
GARDEN SECTOR / 001SELECT A DESTINATION
ILLUSTRATED FICTION / LOCATIONS ARE IMAGINED
YOU ARE MISSION CONTROL

The Birdbath Sea

Can we map the underside of the leaf without getting trapped?

01 / Pick your explorer
Energy budget
Fictional units, not a physics model
4 / 8

2 terrain + 1 explorer + 1 instrument. 4 reserved for recovery.

Pebble is built for soft ground. Water will stop this mission.

Your last 30 runs are saved in this browser. Find them in Saved.

Mission control is under a flowerpot. The deep-space antenna is a bent paper clip. At 07:04, Pebble rolls down a ramp made from a lolly stick and becomes the first member of the expedition to encounter a worm.

Initial reports describe an “uncooperative flexible terrain feature.” The classification is quickly revised.

Big discoveries. Small footprint.

The crew has three possible destinations. A leaf drifts across the Birdbath Sea. A moss forest conceals a canopy at knee height, provided your knees are very close to the ground. Beyond it, a broken terracotta pot forms a ridge with a gap in the middle.

Your job is to choose a machine and an instrument that can answer a particular question, then get the machine home. The expedition is deliberately simple. A camera cannot do a tether’s job. Good software cannot make a boat climb a hill.

“We have discovered a second sun.”— Pip, shortly before learning about the porch light

What is imagined?

The crew, destinations, energy units and mission results are fiction. Each outcome is a written branch, not a live robot simulation or shared vote. Your last 30 field logs stay in this browser and can be exported.

The underlying idea is practical: match the body, sensing and recovery plan to the environment. To see what very small real machines have demonstrated, follow the evidence in our scale explorer.

FOLLOW THE REAL RESEARCH

How small can a robot get?

And what changes when it does?

Your export

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