From the Lunar dessert comes a stranger.

Oop! Obscured figure/colleague in the background. NEVER a good sign.

I wonder what sort of drone that is?

There's no atmosphere, right? Or did I misunderstand?

It movies by icon propulsion! That's why it so awkwardly looks like a flying radiator haha.

Ion propulsion? Given the low gravity of our own moon, that makes sense - but even if that's the case, I'd imagine that probe to be some ultralight model, because ion thrusters lack thrusting power. We're talking decinewtons on average with our average tech, and only experimental designs reaching isonewtons of force.

(I accept that some technology in this universe is better than our own, but I'll still try to extrapolate from what our world knows to better understand this one. Even if human biology isn't derived from Black Idols, and only constrained to its current pattern by Shankar radiation.)

There are functional drones IRL that move via ion propulsion! You can find videos of them working in Earth atmosphere, so I figured they'd have no trouble working along the lunar surface, especially since this comic is ahead of us by about 15 years.

Seeing them work in videos is the only reason why I designed them like this; otherwise, the script I wrote actually called for a drone that used compressed gas for propulsion.

TIL! Thank you all!

I didn't know that ion drives could put that kind of force out! I'll have to look into it. Thanks!

Getting some Monument Mythos vibes from this....

I dunno what you're talking about. There is no house in the ocean.