Mission commander Scott Kerman was really excited about the Delta 16 flight. Despite being one of the original 4 Kerbonauts, she was the only one that had not set foot on one of Kerbin’s satellites.
The Thor class launcher performed the standard launch, match inclination, raise orbit, followed by payload pickup maneuver before deorbiting. The Delta used only 654 m/s to perform its TMI burn, which was a testament to the performance of the lifter.
After one day of the flight, they ended up at Gateway 01 and docked the payload container before moving to the prograde docking port and firing up the espresso machine on the station. Then they waited for the proper alignment of the Mun, before mission specialist Judith Kerman undocked the payload from its adapter and started chasing it with LEM03.
After a quick catch, they started the descent, aiming for a three biome meeting point near the long canal that project Demeter had spotted. Touchdown using the new “suicide burn timer” worked to some extent, they still ended up burning too early.
“KSC, this is LEM03 the Eagle has landed.” Scott was happy to finally plow her boots in the grey regolith. Finni Kerman was the designated scientist on this mission. The idea was to train as broadly as possible so that science would be observed from different angles. Finni set up the local science equipment while Scott started on the rover.
Taken directly from the FirTech lander design this rover presented the very minimum of what would be needed. In fact, when the battery would run out there would not even be a way to recharge it. Fortunately, the required power was little and soon Scott and Finni approached the cliff.
“That is one steep crater,” Scott said. Unable to descent in it, they continued to the third biome which proved more accessible. “If we really want to build a lab on this surface we need to find a really flat spot,” Finni told Scott.
After some time on the surface, the team decided it was time to head back up. So they launched the Eagle in expendable mode and docked with Gateway 01. After the transfer of data, they jettisoned the lander and cargo containers and prepared Delta 16 for maneuvering.
Part of the their mission was to lower the orbit of Gateway 01 from nearly 30 km to less than 10. This would conserve a bit of fuel for the newer missions, but make Rendez-Vous more difficult. With the final part of their mission completed, they put Gateway 01 in automated mode, collected the science and burned for Kerbin.
Somehow they managed to completely screw up their re-entry trajectory and landed in the great ocean, giving recovery crews some additional stress in locating the capsule.
KSC Archives 