'Everypony! Look out the window! I see Duna, at least I think I see it,' Lyra shouted, looking out the window.

'We have entered its SOI,' Dr. Whooves replied.

'2 hours and we will be there,' Planetshine said, 'At least that's to my calculations.'

The ponies on board had not realised Duna's moon, a huge moon compared to the size of the planet. The ponies then went on with their business, but they were excited, very excited to see Duna in all its glory. Planetshine then realised something, she shouldn't have put it on a collision course, so she burnt a little bit radial out so that it wouldn't smash into the surface, meaning that there was a chance that they could try again to land.

Once the two hours were over, they were right above the atmosphere, the planet looked huge from where they were, just like the moons of Equestria. The planet wasn't all that red, but reddish orange with a bit of darker patches which were most likely geographical features, such as canyons or craters.

The ship entered Duna's atmosphere for the first time, Dr. Whooves starting to do experiments to see the properties of Duna's atmosphere. Planetshine was just relaxing in the command pod, making the ship point in the retrograde vector. The ship started to heat up, but didn't heat up much, the atmosphere, even though very thin compared to Equestria's, did a very good job of slowing the craft down.

The deceleration was over 2Gs, but everypony was able to handle it, after all, they needed to handle 15G for short bursts. Then, once the craft was at a slow enough speed, Planetshine deployed the radially mounted parachutes on the fuel tanks near the top. There were 10 parachutes in total, making it so that the craft descended slowly, but it wasn't slow enough to land on its landing legs.

Once the craft nearly reached the ground, traveling at over 15m/s, enough to bust the landing legs, Planetshine gave a burst of the nuclear engines. The nuclear engines, even though having low TWR and had lost efficiency due to the atmosphere, had just over 1 TWR, so that slowed it down enough to not break the landing. The burn had to be done quite a bit earlier than it would have needed to be, that was because the craft had a nuclear engine destroyed and that the one on the other side had to be shut off.

Once the craft finally touched down, the parachutes dropped all on the ground in a mess and the ladders were deployed. Planetshine was the first one to bust out the door, already in her spacesuit. The atmosphere from Dr. Whooves scan was 96% carbon dioxide, which was very bad and was not very thick, almost like a half vacuum, meaning that a spacesuit might be necessary, though a high altitude flight suit and a breathing mask could be possible.

Planetshine landed on the ground with no problem at all. She then planted a flag down, still being the first pony to set hoof on other celestial bodies and planting flags on them. The next thing was all the other ponies went out, one by one until all 5 were out. Planetshine then went into the command pod and then decoupled the rover which was sitting on the side of the rocket. The rover bounced a bit on contact with the surface but that was due to the lower gravity of Duna.

The ponies then went in the rover, and the rover having accommodation for 6 ponies, they didn't have any problems with finding a plave to be in. Planetshine and Lyra in the Mk2 inline cockpit, which was actually made for planes and the others in the Mk1 crew cabins, which were also made for planes.

She then decoupled a little probe from the little docking port on the rover, which Planetshine remotely controlled to land near the rocket to act as a relay. The probe landed gracefully at a very low speed and stayed there unless a dust storm blew it away. Planetshine then started up the electric wheels of the rover and started to head north.

Author's Note

Mind the inconsistency of saying rocket, ship or craft, it's just me being me.

The End
(For this book at least.)