"Icehenge" by Kim Stanley Robinson

"Icehenge" by Kim Stanley Robinson

" In the 23rd century on Pluto, Icehenge stands at the north pole of the planet. It is a study in ice frozen harder than stone, harder than steel. Each slab towers 200 feet above the crater-pocked surface. The one in the center bears an inscription in Sanskrit. The first mission to Pluto found it there, waiting for them. Is it a starlit message from an alien race? Or does it mark a human mystery? For there was one ship that might have passed this way, forgotten decades ago. The novel incorporates two short stories, "To Leave a Mark" and "On the North Pole of Pluto""

A distinctive quality of a great SF author is his or her (unfortunately usually his) ability to project past and present into future, however distant, without breaking links between common sense, scientific facts and observations and futuristic ideas.