Planetshine's Space Odyssey Book 1

Well, I'm at Eve, nearly entering the atmosphere when I woke up, confused for a sec. I went in stasis for half a year already, I can't believe what's going to happen when I return to Equestria. I pointed the rocket prograde, so the fairing would absorb all the heating from the atmosphere, great to say the least. The fairing then proved to be very temperature resistant, able to withstand temperatures over 2500 degrees Celcius.

I was captured into a stable orbit a while of aerobraking, but on a near perfect trajectory to Gilly's orbit line, only needing a small inclination change and mid-course correction totaling up to 30m/s delta-V. I burnt a tiny little bit at apoapsis to raise my periapsis to over the Karman line, which took only 0.1 m/s, so it was too insignificant to count it as a burn.

I went into stasis again, realising that I had to wait a long long time, another orbit actually, to perform the inclination change, which sucked because it meant waiting, but at least I could be in stasis. And you might be asking about how there is still electricity, that's because there are 2 solar panels on the side of the rocket that provide sufficient power.

When I got to the descending node, which was at apoapsis, it only took 28 m/s delta-V, a lot considering I only had 370m/s of it left, which meant I needed to do an EVA landing and get back to Equestria in that slim amount. I then did the 2.1m/s mid-course correction, which would put me on a trajectory that was exactly on the orbit line of Gilly. I now realised that I had to wait for about 600 orbits around Eve to get a good encounter, which totals up to about 1200 days, which was about 3.5 years, which is why I hate my life, but at least I can be in stasis.

The years passed, and the perfect encounter came, and so I woke up from stasis, ready to get out of the rocket to do an EVA landing on Gilly. I had to decelerate to get into a Gilly orbit, which only needed 60m/s of my delta-V meaning that I would have about 30m/s left to correct any errors during the Eve to Equestria transfer. I've also received word from the space center that another astronaut joined, called Flamerider.

Later, another message came in, and that was Starry Night and Flamerider, along with all the other astronauts are going to Dres, a dwarf planet that seems to have extreme geological features, but infrared photos show that it looks very boring. They were going to fly the Dresliner, an experimental spaceplane that would carry 60 ponies to Dres and back with no refueling.

The time came to get into an orbit around the moon, which looked more like an asteroid to me. The asteroid-moon was just a boring old rock, but it has been predicted that it has come from another star system and has captured into an orbit around Eve, nopony knows.

When I was in a stable orbit, traveling at an all-time fast speed of about 30m/s to actually orbit it, I prepared to do the EVA landing. I put on my helmet and my EVA pack/jetpack and went out. The view of the asteroid, uh, asteroid, really started to come in. The moon had many bumps on it, making it look unstable to stand on, as it felt like I would slip a lot.

I did a deorbit burn with my jetpack, later landing in a suicide burn with it. When I was on the ground, Gilly looked much bigger from orbit, the rocky surface showing it had a lot of rocks on it, sitting there perfectly still. I grabbed a surface sample for the space center's research department to analyze, as an interplanetary rock would be worth a lot.

I was now ready to go, even though I've brought a flag. There was no way I was going to plant a flag on such a small celestial body that has barely any gravity, not to mention a rocky hard ground. All I did on the surface was to take a few selfies and a few photos on the landscape.

I turned on my jetpack, jumping first and using it to accelerate me to my rocket, which was still in orbit. It didn't take long for me to catch up to it, only really fine-tuning it a bit but I had enough delta-V in my jetpack to just brute force it anyway. The rendezvous with the rocket didn't go very well, but when I got in, I started the ion engines so I could get into an orbit of Eve.

The orbit really wasn't that good, needing a little bit of a manoeuver to get the periapsis all the way down to 90025m, 25m above its atmosphere. Now I just had to wait for a suitable transfer window to Equestria, meaning I had to wait about 100 days for one, time for going into stasis again.

I'm awake again, ready to do the ejection burn, but first I had to do a burn to get my apoapsis right at the edge of Eve's SOI so that I could make the delta-V usage be slightly lower. The ejection burn had to be timed precisely, as the delta-V I had left was going to be barely enough to get back. When I was finally done with the burn, I was on a trajectory to Equestria, the periapsis about 120000m, meaning a little deep space manoeuver had to be performed.

I then went into stasis to past the time, and the deep space manoeuver took only about 0.1m/s and left me with only 2m/s delta-V left. I crossed my hooves, praying that the patched conics were showing the right trajectory. I then went back into stasis, waiting for when I get to Equestria.

I was at Equestria after about 100 days in stasis, waking up when I was about 1 minute away from entering from the atmosphere, meaning that I could decouple the ion engines and reenter with no problems. I didn't need to care about what I pointed the rocket to, as the fairing and its base was very heat resistant. I went into the atmosphere, the craft slowing down substantially because of the atmosphere.

When it was time to deploy the parachutes at about 5000m off the ground, I deployed the fairing, leaving me exposed. I was falling at about 200m/s, the fairing-base slowing me down and providing lots of drag with a reaction wheel forcing it to face up. I then deployed the 2 drogue chutes, which was plenty to slow me down to a slow enough speed to touch down.

I landed in a barren desert, calling for transponders to fetch me. Anyways, the others were back about a week ago, so I wasn't going to be alone.