Planetshine's Space Odyssey Book 1

The roving across Duna took a little while, but we found a little geological feature, a huge canyon. I thought I saw it from orbit somewhere, right above the equator but not exactly north of where the rocket landed, but I guess I was wrong with where the canyon was.

I said to the other ponies on board, 'I'm going to go out for a while, I want to look at the canyon from the edge.' I put on my spacesuit and put on the brakes of the rover, and then I opened up the door to the greenhouse, which was also a passage to the airlock that would let me outside.

Once I went out, I climbed down the girders, which acted pretty nicely as ladders for some reason. My hooves held on tight, and then I let go, landing perfectly on all 4 hooves. I carefully walked over to the edge of the canyon, still not that used to the gravity. I then leaned over a little to see what was in the canyon, leaning further and further, until accidentally falling down.

I realised my mistake as soon as my hooves slipped, I couldn't flap my wings in the spacesuit, and I only had a jetpack on. I started to panic but then started to calm myself down, realising that I had my jetpack on. 'My jetpack,' I thought, 'I could fly on Duna, but does it work?' There was only one way to know if it would work on gravity higher than the moon, which it was designed for, and that was to try it.

I started to use my jetpack, trying to get myself out of the canyon. The jetpack worked, pretty nice actually, and I was able to ascend a bit, so that got me thinking, can I charter the bottom of the canyon. I tried to make the decision, either go down or return to the rover. I was known to make stupid decisions before, a few times actually, but going down into the canyon would be pretty cool.

I made what could be the most stupid decision ever, and that was to descend down into the canyon. I contacted the rover, 'I'm going down in the canyon.'

Lyra replied when I was descending down, basically falling down and not using my jetpack to help me slow down my descent, in theory, using up less fuel in my jetpack. When I thought was a good time to slow down my descent, but I then realised that it was too late for that, hitting the ground pretty quickly. I hurt my front left hoof upon landing. The throbbing pain didn't come out, but once it did, I cried out in pain, regretting the decision of going down the canyon.

Now I had to get out of the canyon, but I couldn't fly or use my jetpack. The only way I could get out of this was to try to find my way out. I saw a slope that would let me get out on my right, so I started to walk that way, contacting Lyra at the same time. 'Lyra, turn the rover left and drive that direction, I hurt my hoof really badly and I can't use my jetpack, so that's my only way out,' I said.

'Whey don't I drive down into the canyon from that slope?' she replied.

'Oh yeah, what was I thinking? Use the target option on the rover and set me as the target, so you would know where I am.'

'Never new that, see you when I get there.'

I now just had to wait, but the only problem was I didn't know how long I had to wait for, and my stomach felt like it needed some food. I was very lucky I modified my spacesuit to have a storage area that I could store some food or drinks, but I would use that only for emergencies or something like that.'

I waited for about an hour, but no sign of Lyra, so I contacted her one more time. 'Lyra, where are you, it's been like an hour or something like that,' I said, very worried about the situation I was in.

'I'm nearly there, 5 more minutes or so,' she responded with a very confident voice.

'Mkay, just don't take too long.'

I busted out the food, and since my spacesuit also allowed for hoof movement in the body part of the suit, I could eat the food in my spacesuit. I started to eat a carrot, something I randomly had in the food pouch. I didn't know I had that in there until now, usually, it would be potato crisps or something like that.

5 minutes passed, and no sign of Lyra, so I waited a bit more. The place started to look a bit hazy, and it looked like there was going to be a storm coming, but I could see the rover just in time, and then it came for me. Lyra parked it right near me, and I climbed in, closing the door on the way in. I then took off my spacesuit and looked at my hoof. It was much better now but it was bruised, so I applied bandages to keep the pain at bay while I do whatever I do usually.

The dust storm was swirling more, and more dust started to fill the air around the rover. I was now in full control of the rover, and I drove it to a little cave-like shelter I saw when I was down in the canyon waiting for Lyra. From that point on, Dr. Whooves and Bon Bon started to do some farming work in the greenhouse area, which they harvested some sweet potatoes and planted some seeds for other plants like flowers and cabbages. The seed supply in the rover was huge, able to sustain us for more than a year just on food alone from the greenhouse.

I then was getting bored of waiting for the storm to end, so I wanted to go out for a while to have a rest. I put on only my helmet this time, not putting on my spacesuit to go outside. I only had my high altitude flight suit and an oxygen tank on my back. The suit I was wearing was the usual suit I wear, orange in colour and modified again by myself. I was great at modifying spacesuits, but I can't make the spacesuits or design them as I had no idea how to.

My flight suit was able to keep me from depressurisation, which was very useful for flights indeed. The suit would not protect me if I was doing a spacewalk, as the air pressure would be a zero. The suit was rated for 200 pascals, which was enough for Duna's atmosphere of about 600 pascals, which meant I was safe from suffocating. The other ponies flight suits were rated at 800 pascals, quadruple mine, meaning that they had to still wear their spacesuits unlike me.

I went out, grabbing a chair along the way. The rover had a spare chair that anypony can use, it was foldable and it could be carried pretty much everywhere. I unfolded the chair once I was on the ground, setting it up like I would if I was on a beach vacation. When I laid down on the chair, I had an incoming message from the space center that there was another astronaut that finished training and passed her assessment. Her name was Starry Night.

From what I heard from the message, Starry Night was a dark blue pegasus, just like me, but she had different wings which looked like part mechanical wings from the photo of her they gave me. I contacted the space center, 'How is she doing? Is she good at things like piloting?'

I had to wait for a long time, not because the ponies at the space center didn't want to reply but radio waves would need about 8 minutes for a trip to Equestria, and then 8 minutes back, that is if it was traveling at the speed of light. I waited for the 16 minutes, but it was more like 20 minutes for some reason. This time, I heard a new voice, 'Planetshine, it's me, Starry Night, I'm the new astronaut, well, more of a scientist really.'

I replied back, still knowing that it would take a long long time for the message to get back home. I replied, 'I'm seeing forward to see you in the flesh, well, after a long long time of traveling back to Equestria, and other stuff on Duna.'

Bon Bon then contacted me telling me that she would come out. I responded to her, 'Bon Bon, listen up ok. My flight suit has been modified to cope with the Duna atmosphere, you will need a spacesuit if you want to come out.'

She listened to me, and when she came out, I chuckled at her, looking ridiculous in her spacesuit. I only had an oxygen tank on my back which could refine CO2 into oxygen, as I strapped on an oxygenator to it. It was very easy to do, all I had to do was to ask for a small oxygenator and duct tape it on, also making a hole and fitting a tube on it to make it actually work. For electrical power, I had solar panels on it so it wasn't any problem at all.

Bon Bon, in her bulky spacesuit, also had a foldable chair, which she struggled to unfold it. I had to help her, as the spacesuit restricted a lot of movement while I had no problems with movement. Once the chair was all down and all good, I went back into the rover, telling everypony else to get out and play around in our shelter so we could wait out the dust storm.

The others put on their spacesuits, Lyra doing it easily as she could use her magic, helping the others do the same. Derpy stumbled a lot trying to do so, even with Lyra's help, but that was somewhat rectified when she started to do it herself, having better coordination. Some of them were just jealous that I was able to be out on my flight suit, but it wasn't my fault I couldn't modify other's suits, the administration just denied it.

We waited for the storm to end, which only took about an hour or so. Once the storm ended, we climbed into the rover and started to drive around the canyon, eventually getting out of it. From that point on, we roved around Duna, chartering most of the planet, exploring the poles and planting flags on the north and south poles.