Destination Amaltheia

A cargo spaceship, propelled by a photon engine with a large reflective mirror ("sail"), visits the Jupiter system to deliver a cargo to a manned science station on Amalthea. Damaged by meteorites, the spaceship falls into Jupiter, but survives the pressure & floats in the dense atmosphere; the crew manage to work around the damaged mirror & start the main engine to escape Jupiter & finally reach Amalthea.

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Today, Arkady & Boris Strugatsky are counted among the best science fiction writers of the twentieth century, but their relationship with the late-Soviet literary establishment in their home country of Russia was often fraught. 

Acclaimed during the brief Khrushchev Thaw, the Strugatskys began to fall from grace in the late 1960s as publishers became increasingly reluctant to release their works. The authors' inability to publish, however, diminished neither their productivity nor their popularity among readers. Their novels & short stories, retyped by hand, circulated widely through unofficial channels within the Soviet Union & occasionally turned up abroad in unauthorized translation.