Grace and Rocky marvel at their similarities and begin to form a close friendship, sharing a similar sense of humor. Eridians and humans are similarly intelligent, although Eridians are sightless, relying on highly developed sonar senses instead, and are less technologically advanced than humans, although they have perfect memories and highly advanced engineering, and Rocky can produce nearly anything from xenonite, a pure-xenon compound stronger than any material on Earth. Rocky’s home star is also infected with Astrophage, and he is at Tau Ceti for the same reason: to learn how to stop Astrophage from destroying 40 Eridiani and all life on Rocky’s home planet with it. After initial communication via scale models, Rocky and Grace learn to communicate verbally with the help of translation software. As the story unfolds in a wry, first-person present tense and alternates scenes from the past and present, Grace recalls discovering Astrophage and preparing for Project Hail Mary as the mission’s lead scientist, and he tries to discover why Astrophage have not destroyed Tau Ceti but seem to be affecting every other star in the local galaxy.Īt Tau Ceti, Grace encounters an alien spaceship, the Blip-A, from the 40 Eridani solar system and meets an Eridian, a dog-sized spider-like extraterrestrial with hard mineral skin whom he names Rocky and who is also the only surviving member of his respective crew. However, the Hail Mary is on a sacrifice mission, as the ship can’t carry enough fuel for a return trip. To save all of civilization, Grace must learn why Tau Ceti is unaffected by Astrophage and send data probes back to Earth. As the Astrophage cause solar dimming, humanity has only 26 years before crop failure, famine, and climate change will reduce the world population by half, and they will ultimately cause total extinction.

Earth’s sun is infected with Astrophage, an alien life form that navigates a migration pattern between the sun and Venus via infrared light emission called the Petrova Line. Gradually, Grace recalls that his controversial academic work on extraterrestrials caused him to be drafted into Project Hail Mary, a mission 12 light-years from Earth to the Tau Ceti solar system to save all of humanity. Ryland Grace wakes up on the Hail Mary interstellar spaceship with total amnesia, the only surviving member of a three-person crew. In the near future, junior high school science teacher Dr.

Project hail