Author's Note

There will be a lot of landings, trust me... (and a lot of repetition)
Also if there are some words like 'realised' using an s instead of z, I am not American so I would write like that.

Landings

'Planetshine wake up, PLANETSHINE!' Dr. Whooves shouted

Planetshine finally woke up from sleep. 'What, I was dreaming of planting a flag somewhere on Minmus. I was nearly going to plant it when you literally shouted at me,' she said.

'Well, look out the window, you see that minty ball, that's Minmus, our destination.' Dr. Whooves replied.

'Oh wow, can we go EVA so we can take some pictures of it and all that and send them all back home?'

'That's a really good idea, I'll put on my spacesuit and everything. We can take a selfie together.'

The two ponies put on their spacesuits and then they went outside. Dr. Whooves had a camera in his hoof. The camera was small, unlike the big ones in Equestria. (It's basically a GoPro) Dr. Whooves positioned himself next to Planetshine with Minmus in the background. He took the picture and then Planetshine went back to her command pod. Dr. Whooves performed some experiments high above Minmus and then went back in his pod.

After a bit of time of coasting along in space, the rocket was near its periapsis of 20000m above Minmus, Planetshine burnt retrograde so she would get into a stable orbit around Minmus. Minmus up close looked like something that was edible, like mint ice cream, but the moon was indeed made of rock and solid materials, so eating it wasn't an option.

Once they were in orbit around Minmus, Planetshine asked mission control, 'Mission control, this is Planetshine, am I able to land on Minmus like Dr. Whooves.'

Mission control responded, 'Planetshine, you are able to land on Minmus. The only problem is that you don't have landing legs so you might have to touch down very slowly so it doesn't break the engine.'

Planetshine was very happy to have mission control let her be able to land on Minmus. She then plotted a place to land on Minmus and then decoupled Dr. Whooves' lander. The only thing was that Dr. Whooves didn't know that Planetshine had another better place to land than him.

Dr. Whooves deorbited his lander but Planetshine waited a few minutes and then she deorbited her 'lander.' Planetshine aimed for the edge of a plateau overlooking the vast flats that Dr. Whooves would land at. After a little while of coasting along, Dr. Whooves started his suicide burn a bit early because he wanted a nice gentle touchdown. Planershine on the other hoof wasn't the best at safety precautions and did her suicide burn as late as possible.

Dr. Whooves started burning first, he burnt retrograde when he was about 1km above the ground so he could have a safe landing, while Planetshine was still waiting for an optimal time to do her suicide burn. After a few seconds of waiting, she started her burn. The burn didn't take long as Minmus' gravity is so low and that there was only 160m/s of speed to kill off.

Once she touched down with a speed of only 0.2 m/s on the very edge of the plateau, she put on her spacesuit and went out for an EVA. From her perspective, she could see Dr. Whooves struggling to get his lander onto the surface of the flats, burning his engine slowly to get a very optimal touchdown. She then took out a flag from her pod and planted it. She shoved the flag deep into the ground and turned a knob that would extend the flag.

After a few seconds of trial and error, Dr. Whooves finally touched down. Once he was on the ground, he contacted Planetshine, 'Planetshine, have you landed because I finally did.'

She replied, 'Yeah, I landed like ages ago, I'm on the edge of a plateau just west from you.'

'Nice! I'm going to perform some experiments, for now, I'll meet with you later.'

'Ok.'

After Dr. Whooves performed experiments and scans of Minmus' flats, he put on his spacesuit and went on an EVA. He looked west and indeed there it was. Planetshine waved at Dr. Whooves and then she contacted him, 'Dr. Whooves, do you see me?'

'Yes, indeed I do.' He said.

'Did you see me wave at you?'

'Yep, from where I am, I can see you clearly, I don't think we landed that far away from each other.'

'Can you meet me up on top of this plateau?'

'That's a good idea, I'll come up as fast as I can, I know you don't like waiting.'

Dr. Whooves climbed in his command pod, without bothering to take off his spacesuit. He throttled his engine to about 1/3 thrust and aimed for Planetshine. His trajectory was a little off though, but he could always do some manoeuvers while landing to get the landing right near Planetshine.

Dr. Whooves waited until the lander got to where Planetshine was. He then started doing a retrograde burn so he could kill off all his horizontal and vertical speed. He landed right near Planetshine, only about a meter away to be exact. He quickly got off the lander and landed just beside Planetshine.

Planetshine greeted him and then told Dr. Whooves to look into the distance. Once he faced that way, what he saw was just amazing. The flats looked endless and the mountains surrounding it looked gorgeous. The two took a few selfies with the small camera they had and then sent them back to the astronauts back home in Equestria.

Bon Bon was the first one that saw the photo come through. She then told every pony else in the space center to see the photo of the two ponies on Minmus with a flag and the landscape in the background. The ponies thought the photo was very beautiful. The landscape looked extremely huge compared to the two ponies.

Some of the ponies at the space center were very surprised they even landed. They had absolutely no experience in landing spacecraft. This was their first time ever doing a landing. They had done simulations of landings though, but doing real ones were unheard of.

Dr. Whooves suggested it would be a good time to go and the two ponies climbed into their command pods. Planetshine in the refueller and Dr. Whooves in the lander. Dr. Whooves ran some experiments and Planetshine just got her refueller into Minmus orbit. Dr. Whooves jumped to another biome. The biome he first thought about would be another flat. The other flats had a chance of being different and could solve why Minmus had such huge flats.

While Planetshine was putting her refueller in a low Minmus orbit, Dr. Whooves fired up his engines and burnt a little bit so he could end up in another place. He thought the smaller flats would be a pretty good place to land on. He coasted along in space above Minmus for a while and then started his suicide burn closer to the ground than before. After touchdown, he realised he needed to refuel.

Dr. Whooves then went on an EVA to take surface samples and since he had 10 flags in his command pod, he thought it would be a good idea to plant one every time he landed. Dr. Whooves shoved the flag's end into the ground. The ground felt very solid, but it didn't feel right to him. It felt like ice and not some rocky substance he thought it would be.

He picked up the chipped crystals from planting the flag and then headed back in his lander. He looked at the crystals. Inside his lander, it was about 25 degrees Celcius, so if it was a watery substance, it would most definitely melt. The crystals didn't melt, so that rose some questions for him. How were these flats formed, and how are they perfectly flat with absolutely bumps or ridges. The only conclusion he would have was that it could be minty lakes on the surface on Minmus somehow crystallised.

Dr. Whooves waited for a while to have the refueller in the right place to rendezvous and dock. He had to wait about an hour until the refueller was in an optimal position for a rendezvous. Dr. Whooves started up his engines and then did a very aggressive gravity turn. He knew that doing a gravity turn very early on a body that had no atmosphere would save more delta-V and since the refueller was in a very low orbit, was also useful for him to dock with it.

Once Dr. Whooves was in orbit, he did a circularisation burn. His first intercept with the refueller wasn't the most optimal one, only having a separation of about 2km. He did a small correction burn, only burning about 5m/s for a rendezvous with the refueller with a separation of only 30m. After getting to the closest point, he matched speeds with the refueller.

The only problem now was that he had no RCS to dock with the refueller. He then thought of a radical new plan. He called Planetshine, 'Planetshine, you know the docking port on your command pod? Try to make it target my docking port and I'll make my lander point in the direction of your docking port.'

Planetshine did what Dr. Whooves said to her. Then, Dr. Whooves throttled his engine just by a little bit. He then quickly shut down his engine, slowly floating to the docking port. The lander and refueller docked together. Planetshine started the fuel transfer while Dr. Whooves waited for a while waiting for the fuel to transfer.

After transferring the fuel, he undocked his lander and then he deorbited it for another time. He this time aimed for the highlands. The highlands looked extremely high. After landing there, he did some experiments again and then he realised something. His altimeter said the elevation of the highlands were 5612m high. Equestria's highest peak was only just over 8km high. Comparing to Equestria's size, Minmus was extremely small. The height of the highlands on Minmus was about 2.5 km higher than Equestria's highest peak.

He then conducted some experiments and went on a quick EVA to look at the scenery from that height. He jetpacked over to the nearest cliff edge to take a look at the scenery. It looked absolutely beautiful. He could see a lot of things up at where he was, the flats, plateau tops, and the flats.

He then set his next target to be the lowlands. The lowlands are the exact opposite of the highlands. They were low in elevation instead of being very high in elevation. The lowlands that Dr. Whooves was targeting were the ones near the flats. The lowlands near the flats were only 50m above zero elevation. The altimeter was calibrated so that zero elevation was the surface of the flats, so the lowlands he was aiming for would be 50m above the flats.

Once he was on a trajectory to the lowlands, he relaxed for a while, waiting for the right time to do the suicide burn. Once his did his suicide burn and landed, he conducted more experiments and went out on an EVA to plant a flag. The flag was a little hard to plant, the rock below him was very tough. It resisted a few flag plantings, but Dr. Whooves finally planted the flag on the 9th attempt.

After that, he headed for the refueller again. This time he only had to wait 10 minutes instead of 1 hour. He did what he did last time, do a very precise rendezvous of only a 30m separation and dock without RCS. Once he finished refuelling, Planetshine only had about 600m/s delta-V left, enough for one more refuel. Dr. Whooves then aimed for the poles of Minmus.

The plan was to raise his apoapsis and then do an inclination adjustment. The inclination adjustment at the apoapsis was only a 30m/s burn as it was very high up Minmus. Once he was at the poles, he started to do a retrograde burn to get the lander out of orbit.

Once he finished his suicide burn, he landed softly. Then he did some did some more experiments and scans and went on an EVA to plant a flag. After getting back in his lander, he then headed for the south poles. The south poles essentially looked the same and have about the same elevation. He did even more experiments on the surface of the south poles and did another EVA to plant another flag.

Once he was done with that, he was ready to go back home with all that data he collected.