Author's Note

Next chapter is going to be about going to Minmus, other than that, I wrote orbited around Equestria because ponies would most likely refer to the planet as Equestria.
If you want a sneak peak of the rocket I'm going to build to go to Minmus, click here.

Orbiter I

After unlocking a fair bit of the lower parts of the tech tree, Equestrian Aerospace had the tech to go to orbit and analyze the space around Equestria, and so they constructed a new bigger and better rocket named Orbiter I. Orbiter I was much more advanced than the last few rockets, as the first stage is more efficient because it used liquid fuel and oxidizer instead of solid fuel.

Orbiter I stood there on the launch pad, with Planetshine in the Mk1 command pod, ready for takeoff. 'Planetshine,' Gene called out, 'Are you ready for takeoff?'

She replied, 'Yes I am Gene, I'm so excited, aren't you excited too?'

Gene said yes to her, and started the countdown. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Liftoff!

The rocket had a higher thrust-to-weight ratio than the last one, so it took off a bit faster. Planetshine withstood more than 6Gs acceleration and had to bear the extremely uncomfortable feeling of being squashed to the ground, or in this case, her chair. She had to wait a few seconds until the acceleration calmed down by a bit to start the gravity turn needed to get her into orbit.

She started off with a slow gravity turn, and then she started to get aggressive with it because she saw her vertical speed was a bit too high and her apoapsis would be about 60000m, and the atmosphere ends at 70000m. She detached the side boosters when she was in a sub-orbital trajectory so that the boosters will fall down into Equestria and get destroyed because nopony wanted debris in orbit. The main booster was an LV-45 Swivel engine, which had enough gimbal to keep her rocket steady and it had enough delta-V left to get all the way to orbit and back to Equestria.

After burning at the apoapsis for a bit, the rocket's periapsis finally reached above the Karman line or the edge of the atmosphere. After completing 2 orbits of Equestria, and doing a bit of recreational snacking, Planetshine turned retrograde to put herself onto a collision course to somewhere out of Equestria, which means she needs to wait a long time until the transponders get to her.

A good thing she realised right after retro burning was that Equestria had an atmosphere, so she could slow herself down and end up right in Equestria, and not somewhere like outside of Equestria. After going below the Karman line, she decoupled her boosters and at about 30000m, the boosters exploded due to overheating in Equestria's atmosphere. At least she had a heat shield to protect her from the reentry heating.

She deployed the parachute at about 1km above the ground and the command pod slowly fell down and somehow, due to extreme luck, landed on one of Manehatten's tallest buildings. The Operations Manager, Gus, realised that he didn't need to retrieve it back, it would the landing spot of the command pod of the first ever rocket that got into orbit. Planetshine crawled out of the command pod, thrilled to go and see Manehatten. She contacted the administrators and her fellow astronauts that she would explore Manehatten.

She flew down the building (because she is a pegasus) and she was greeted by a lot of ponies cheering for her. They all knew that she was the first ever pony to go to orbit and back to Equestria. She told her story to the ponies that were with her the story of how she got into orbit and everything that happened during that time. Then, she contacted the administration that she would like to have a holiday in Manehatten. The administration agreed to have her go on a holiday in Manehatten, and even booked a hotel for her to stay in for her holiday.

Data gained: 52
Data value: 7
Science gained: 364