What obvious example am I overlooking?

[james_davis_nicoll]

I'm trying to think of a good example of an SF story with a crewed exploration vehicle armed with a large flotilla of robotic probes (The idea being the meat stays where it's safe, but close enough to the remotes not to have significant time lag).

Comments

Dome, by Michael Reeves and Steve Perry

[disassembly_rsn]

Chapter 1 - grad student in geology sends a probe out from his sub to study an active volcano closeup. If he hadn't done something silly in an attempt to get even more impressive pictures / data for his doctoral defense, he'd have been fine.