'Planetshine, I'm ready to go home, are you too?' Dr. Whooves said.

Planetshine responded, 'Ok Dr. Whooves, race you home!'

'It's not a race.'

'Well, I'm a bit bored so can I make it a race?'

'Alright, but there is a chance I might go for a flyby of the moon because it seems to be in a good place for a flyby back home.'

'You know, doing a flyby of the moon will boost up your speed, so you could be home faster, but I can use up the rest of the fuel accelerating back home.'

Dr. Whooves fired up the engines in his lander, and soon after, he did a circularisation burn to get into orbit. The only downside was that he was in a polar orbit, so going to the moon for a flyby would take more delta-V than it would in an equatorial orbit of Minmus. He contacted mission control to make a manoeuver node to take him on a low flyby of the moon.

The moon flyby had a periapsis of just over 10000m, about 5km above the surface of the moon. If it was Planetshine, she would've edited her manoeuver node so that her periapsis would be about 5m above the surface of the moon for a thrill-seeking experience.

Dr. Whooves started his ejection burn to get to the moon while Planetshine just did an average burn to get her back to Equestria. Once Dr. Whooves was done with his burn he waited for a while. The trajectory of his lander would get back to Equestria without any manoeuvers. Planetshine was also on a collision course with Equestria. She then burned prograde to get her speed up and up by using her remaining 400m/s delta-V.

Dr. Whooves took a quick nap while Planetshine was doing some recreational snacking. Planetshine loved eating snacks. Her favourite was dandelions because she liked the flavour of them. After Dr. Whooves woke up, he was near the moon. His altimeter read 60km above the surface of the moon.

He ran some scans and experiments when he was high above the moon. He then waited for a while to be at his moon periapsis. The moon from his perspective seemed huge. It looked like it has a lot of craters scattered along the surface and had huge dark patches on the surface. He then quickly took a few photos of the moon and analyzed his scans. The scans detected that the dark patches were most likely craters from asteroids that have crashed into the surface of the moon.

Once he was at his periapsis, he started to run some more experiments and scans. He wanted to discover what was on the surface of the moon and learn more about the moon from a scientific standpoint. The scans that he ran when he was flying by the moon showed that no less than a few hundred asteroids have collided into the surface of the moon. He then started pondering how those asteroids didn't collide into the surface of Equestria.

'Planetshine' Dr. Whooves said, 'Where are you? I'm past the moon.'

Planetshine replied, 'I'm past the moon, I'm like way past it. I sort of accelerated my spacecraft and it's going to crash into Equestria in about 30 minutes.'

'Seriously, I thought I was going to win, the moon would've given me some extra speed. Anyways, I'm going to get back home in about 35 minutes. I'm sad that you beat me by 5 minutes.'

'Yeah.'

Planetshine entered Equestria's atmosphere while Dr. Whooves was still coasting along space. She decoupled the fuel tanks and pointed her command pod retrograde. The heat shield proved to be very good and protected her from all reentry heating. After enduring over 10G deceleration, at about 2000m above the Celestial Sea, she deployed her parachute.

She splashed down into the Celestial Sea and then the space center sent out transponders to recover her from splashdown. Then, the administration realised something, there was a yacht heading in Planetshine's direction. They contacted the captain of the yacht to recover Planetshine instead of sending transponders to save bits.

Dr. Whooves was the next one to enter the atmosphere. He did what Planetshine did. He decoupled his command pod from the fuel and engines so he could re-enter safely. He pointed his command pod retrograde so the heat shield would shield him from all the reentry heat.

Instead of splashing down in the sea, he would land on the ground. His trajectory would place him near his hometown, Ponyville. He then deployed his parachute. After deploying his parachute, he landed just north of Ponyville. Then, he crawled out of his command pod and some ponies after seeing him, ran to him and asked him what happened to him.

Since he landed near Ponyville, Equestrian Aerospace would mark that site near Ponyville the remnants of the first ever lander that landed on another celestial body. He then called the administration and the other astronauts that he would have a long holiday after the extremely long journey to Minmus and back with a lot of landings.

The administration agreed that he should have an extra long holiday instead of having a normal holiday. Planetshine also asked for a holiday, but she kept it short as she wanted to get back to the astronauts at the space center.

Data: 449
Data Value: 8.23
Science:3695

Author's Note

This is what I really did in my first KSP mission...