In a prefatory comment to the novel, Clarke states he intended to build this work with new data from the planned Galileo probe of Jupiter, but the loss of the Challenger space shuttle so delayed the American space program that he decided to write another view without waiting for results of the Galileo mission. He has used some of the characters and premises about alien life previously set forth in 2001 and 2010, but he does not consider 2061 a direct sequel to the earlier stories—although others do.