The crowds had severely diminished for the night launch of Scott Kerman on the Aries 9. Perhaps launches had become routine, and people just watched the capture the next day, but even the novelty of launching out of Kerbia failed to get people to the pad to watch a flawless launch. Following a standard launch profile, Scott inserted her craft in a 95×91 km orbit and initiated the deployment of the panels.
“Not again,” Gene sighed as he looked at the monitor. They had lost another solar panel but the second one deployed normally. “Hmm, still a go but go fire some engineers.”
The next day Jebediah took off from the KSC aiming for a 75x81km orbit, his solar panels worked fine btw. He was trying to catch up with Scott for this so-called Rendez-vous maneuver. He chased her for 3 days before running out of fuel. With a last-ditch attempt, he came within 62km and fell back to Kerbin after that.
Scott would join him 2 days later, but it had become clear that for further research in space and longer durations, they would need better spacecraft.
KSC Archives 