[shagie]

I can't remember the name of the story, but I'm pretty sure that it was the last one in True Names and Other Dangers. It was told from the standpoint of an intelligent rocket ship that was launched because of an impending calamity. That ship (and many others) were long shot "lets see if we can find a life supporting world in the target solar system."

(late edit) - found it - "Long Shot" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Collected_Stories_of_Verno...

> Description of a voyage from Earth to Alpha Centauri by an automated, AI controlled colony ship. The ship is launched as a "long shot" to preserve the human race because the Earth is going to be destroyed by a rapidly expanding sun. Ilse, the AI, carries human zygotes on a ten thousand year trip to search for a suitable planet around Alpha Centauri. Despite deteriorating hardware which causes her to "forget" the entire purpose of the mission, she is able to make inferences and use her remaining functional components to complete the mission. Vinge states his interest in writing a sequel depicting the lives of the humans born on this world.

Locations where it has appeared - https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?51200

It can be borrowed from archive.org:

https://archive.org/details/collectedstories0000ving/mode/2u...

https://archive.org/details/truenamesotherda00ving/page/n5/m...