Discovery 04
Discovery 04 was repositioned in low Duna orbit after engineers re-activated a relay antenna on the main body. She would serve as a low orbit communication relay for upcoming missions. Rumors that engineers had completely forgotten about this antenna are strongly denied.
Explorer 01
3 years, 63 days, and 1 hour into its mission, Explorer 01 finally entered the SOI of Moho after many misadventures and heroic recoveries. It sped towards the molten ball of lava and had its antennae primed.
There was some poetic justice in the fact that the later probes that had overtaken her, lacked some instruments, which made the flyby, though not the first, still valuable.
It dazzled past the planet and in 19 minutes left the sphere of influence again. In 4 years there was a close encounter, but not close enough for the remaining delta-v.
Explorer 08
Explorer 08 made its final correction burn and waited for the swing by Tylo to be swung to a closer orbit. As the green giant approached, sensors picked up some anomalous readings.
It ended in an eccentric orbit and would need to wait for 70 days for a Laythe encounter, hopefully, it could drop its payload on land and without burning up in the atmosphere.
Spirit 03
Sprit 03 made a soft landing without any problems in the low lands of Dress. The final stage had fuel to spare. The deployment of the rover was however delayed until the sun would be present.
As the rover relayed back its data, it was clear that there was some gravioli in the crust, though not much. Scientists focussed their efforts on exploring the meteorites that had cluttered the surface of the tiny planet.
Discovery 01
S201A Discovery 01 arrived at Moho with relatively low relative speed. Which allowed for capture, though not in a perfect orbit. Resource mapping did begin and was partially successful.
Discovery 08’s amazing discovery
Scientists peered over the data, phone calls were made, reporters started the interviews, none could make sense of it. It was an anomaly in low Jool orbit. Very dense, very small, and …. very high on graviloli particles. Finally, some scientists were able to put it into words: “it seems like there is a stable wormhole near Jool.” He paused for a minute, “and it seems the monoliths are feeding it.”
Dr. Erilorf provided the more popular description for the press: “We found the gateway to the stars.”
Gene, sighed, this would speed up things quite a bit. Everyone was eager to see this with their own eyes and there was a window opening up in roughly a year. This meant two large programs simultaneously.
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