Once the collected information was logged in the star maps, the Harmony was undocked from the space station and the Young Six headed to Sector 7. Arriving at the space station, they received some shocking information from the Commander, which was Daring Do.
“Supposedly, this solar system was home to an intelligent species. Shockingly, the space station we are on was pre-existing. We just had to repair it and create an artificial gravity generator. The planet we are orbiting is called Earth, and it was our first destination to map out. We had just started mapping when we heard that the budgets were cut. All of the information we managed to gather is that there is friendly life on the planet and the air is safe to breathe. Due to the budget cuts, we did not have the opportunity to scout for cities or technology. There are seven other planets besides Earth and its moon. They are called Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.”, she explained.
“We will save Earth for last. Right now, we need to map the other seven planets.”, said Sandbar.
Daring Do acknowledged Sandbar’s plans and the Young Six proceeded with the final leg of their cosmic mission.
Gallus decided to map out Earth’s moon along with Mars. He started with the Earth’s moon. Daring Do made sure to warn him that the gravity would be less since the moon was smaller than Earth. He acknowledged and proceeded to land. He touched down slowly in order to secure a soft landing and then deployed his rover.
As he sped along the surface, he took hundreds of pictures. He came across six structures with a flag next to them in different places. Each one had a name plate that said who came to that spot. He was unable to tell what the flags looked like, because they had faded from many years of exposure to sunlight. At three of the sites, he found rovers, but their batteries were dead. His rover had a solar panel with which to recharge the batteries. Once he had visited all of the craters and rock formations, along with taking samples, he returned to his ship and lifted off to head for Mars.
On Mars, Gallus noticed that anything he had with him weighed only 1/3 of what it would weigh normally. As he traversed the planet, he found what appeared to be several mechanical devices and probes that had been sent long ago. Some of these machines were either badly broken or completely destroyed. Not wanting to risk breaking anything, he only took pictures. Dust storms happened four times during his trek, but he had secured his ship firmly so it wouldn’t get flipped over and damaged. At one point, he found what looked like an enormous volcano, but a seismic scan said it was only dormant and not going to erupt anytime soon. After confirming that he had charted all of the landscape on Mars; Gallus returned to his ship, launched, and returned to the space station.
**
Ocellus chose Uranus and Neptune as her destinations to map out. Both of these planets appeared bluish in color and did not have any solid landmasses except for their moons. Since these two planets were mostly gas, Ocellus charted them from her ship. Daring Do had said there weren’t any reports of what the moons were named, so Ocellus only took note of the number of moons instead. Her sensors showed that Neptune was mostly composed of helium, hydrogen, and sulfur with traces of methane. Looking through her ship’s telescope, she saw some very faint rings that appeared to be made of small rock fragments. She sent a probe down to analyze the atmosphere and its anemometer indicated that this planet was EXTREMELY windy. There was also ice below the clouds, but the constant wind kept it from drifting into space. She sent the probe deeper and found that there was indeed a core to Neptune, made of ice and rock, that seemed to be exactly the same size as Earth. In the process of locating the core, she found that there was water, ammonia, and methane ice below the main atmosphere.
Uranus was similar, but it was slightly different in color. It was a bluish-green color. Her ship’s computer identified this to be the result of the methane in the atmosphere absorbing red light. She saw the rings more clearly than the rings around Neptune due to the fact that these rings were composed of larger particles. These were mainly rocks and large pieces of ice. The inner rings were darker and more difficult to see. Ocellus had to use a night-vision function in her telescope in order to see these rings. They were so dark that she noted they looked similar to charcoal. What really stood out is that the rings were vertical. She had no idea why this was, nor did Daring Do when Ocellus returned to the space station after making sure she had not missed anything.
**
Silverstream picked her destination to be Saturn. The swirling and rolling gases on this planet were indicated by a probe she sent down to be at a pressure high enough to crush, melt, or vaporize her ship if she tried to land. Her probe was destroyed since its shields failed after a few hours, but she knew this from the get-go. Similar to what Ocellus had reported about Uranus and Neptune, Saturn’s atmosphere was mostly composed of hydrogen and helium. Silverstream saw on her scanner that Saturn had almost 90 moons, and she was astonished by the different colored clouds that appeared as stripes around the planet in various shades of brown, gray, and yellow.
She saw many rings around Saturn that were clearly visible. They were made of ice chunks and rocks that had been smashed by the magnetic field and coated with dust and other substances. Some of these chunks were close to being as big as a house, while some were even bigger and close to being the size of mountains. She noted all of this in her logs before confirming that she had missed nothing. Once she was certain that all of her notes were accurate, she left Saturn and returned to the space station.
**
With Mercury and Venus being the closest ones to the sun, Smolder volunteered to chart them. These two planets would be blistering hot, so she readied her heat suit and swapped out the cooling-water with liquid nitrogen. Mercury was filled with craters, similar to Earth’s moon as Sandbar said. Whenever the sun was beating down, the surface reached a scorching 800 degrees Fahrenheit. However, there was no atmosphere to hold in all of that heat. So the temperature plummeted to a bitter-cold negative 290 degrees Fahrenheit when the sun had gone down. On some parts of the planet, the sun would rise briefly, set quickly, and then rise again. Temperatures and high levels of radiation from the sun led Smolder to say that it was impossible for life to be possible without extreme protection on Mercury.
Venus was another story. This planet was hotter than Mercury since it was heavily wrapped in clouds and covered with thousands of small volcanoes. The hottest temperature reached 900 degrees Fahrenheit. The clouds were mostly composed of sulfuric acid, and there were high levels of carbon-dioxide which had a corrosive effect at surface levels. This was due to the fact that the CO2 was both very hot and at high pressure at the same time. Luckily, both Smolder’s suit and her ship were designed to be resistant to atmospheres like this. She had to watch her step in order to avoid stepping or falling in the boiling rivers of lava. Once Smolder was certain that she had mapped out Venus completely; she lifted off and returned to the space station around Earth.
**
Yona chose to map the largest planet, Jupiter. Her sensors said that the magnetic field was 20 times stronger than Earth’s, so she kept her distance. Only with her telescope could Yona see Jupiter’s very faint rings of dust. She also sent a probe to measure the wind speed inside a huge red spot on Jupiter’s surface. Her readings from the anemometer registered about 270 MPH, which told her it was a raging storm, similar to a hurricane. Yona was also successful in calculating that Jupiter was bigger than any other planet in this entire solar system. Other readouts from her probes indicated strong pressure and heat levels could destroy a spaceship if it tried to land on Jupiter, meaning it was impossible to establish a research outpost. This was also confirmed when her probes showed that Jupiter had no defined surface. What she could tell was that there were plumes of sulfur and phosphorous-rich gases that rose from Jupiter’s interior layers. Combined with a very fast rotation that lasted only 10 hours each, creating jet-streams, these clouds were separated into dark bands and bright belts across very long stretches.
Jupiter had many moons, one of which had a crust made of solid ice. Yona explored this moon, called Europa, to see what secrets it held. She had to use a superheated drill to pierce through the ice, because it was harder than granite. 10 miles under the ice, she found a raging ocean of water, that held the possible elements to sustain life. She opted to not search for life, because she didn’t know how long it would take until her drilled hole froze shut. Also, she had to avoid geysers when landing. Luckily, she landed on Europa without being hit by flash-frozen water from the geysers, and she left in the same manner. This involved taking tight maneuvers, but she was unscathed in the end. A quick analysis of Jupiter’s magnetic field showed that Europa was squeezed and stretched as it orbited, which led to the water being in constant motion under the ice.
After Yona had taken all of the pictures she needed, she flew back through the asteroid belt and returned to the space station. She and her friends were now ready to explore Earth.