The Nesburrow Plaque

The Nesburrow Plaque is one of many artifacts found on asteroid G888887, a minor rogue planetary body surveyed by Foundation mining teams in A.Y. 2377. The Plaque and associated articles are of particular scientific and historical note, as they represent the only known artifacts of a relatively advanced civilization, artifacts that arrived in a highly unusual place.

Discovery

During the early Second Age the Foundation explored the prospect of short-term, high-yield mining ventures, particularly targetting extra-solar and outer-solar bodies. The point of the project was largely a search for new sources of raw materials, but had the advantage of, in one foundation representative's words "offering a venue where particularly invasive methods of extraction can be used, with little concern over environmental impact". True to form, it was very difficult to get environmentalists to care about lifeless rocks in the voids between stars.

Mining fleets were deployed to different regions and operated in a two-fold program. Small, fast, lightly-crewed propsector ships would locate, catalog, and designate targets, while a large task force would later come in and go after any materials of value. The program ultimately proved ineffective, as in order to turn a profit fleets would need to remain afield for years or even decades at a time, while standard Foundation work contracts limit time in space to no more than six months.

During the eleven years the project was in operation, G888887 was visited only by a single prospector ship. The small, rocky body was initially scanned from a distant flybye, and immediately excluded as being both too small and too light to have any value. The prospector ship, however, operating with a six-man crew, decided to visit the site anyway. Their motivations were simple: the team was ahead of schedule, had a long way to go before their next target, and were bored. Every member of the crew would later state that there was no draw other than "Hey, let's all go walk around on the surface of a tiny rock and makes jokes."