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Central Kafrican News

The Federal Space Administration of Kafrica has announced that the 2 Nostradamus spacecraft, launched in the latter half of 2203, have reached and successfully flown past the Evian System. Expanding the horizons of our fledgling Space Program as we propel ourselves to the goal of landing Kafricans on the Moon by the end of the decade.

In Mission Control, Angus, where the Nostradamus 2 and Nostradamus 3 Spacecraft began their journeys on a Farnese rocket, carrying them and their scientific instruments and cameras to the planet Eve. The purple smudge in our Kerbin skies. A smudge that was once inhabited by Grestinian citizens nearly 2 centuries ago. A time long lost to the books of history. It is not yet understood what exactly happened to the brave Kafrican colonists on the purple rock, a large part of the Nostradamus program is to figure out what exactly happened to those brave souls. The first step being a dual spacecraft Mission to the Evian system. Nostradamus 2 and 3. Following the successful dual launch, and the successful deployment of antennas and instruments, the spacecraft were put into a deep sleep. After around 2 months, they were awoken for checkouts and to perform a course correction maneuver. If both spacecraft remained healthy through their CCM and to near Eve space, Nostradamus 3 would be performing a second correction maneuver. This maneuver would place the spacecraft on a course to perform a 90 second long flyby of the lonely space rock known as Gilly. A moon which hosted another Kafrican colony, the colonial possession of the Wo'vian Republic, now part of modern day Imperial Westray. Wo' was a nation known mostly for its army of tractors, yet it also possessed a long standing relationship with Elysium and the Joolian Coalition. Perhaps, if successful, Nostradamus 3 can flyby Gilly and use its instruments to figure out what happened to the Wo'vian colony too.

As the controllers held their breaths, far away the Nostradamus 2 prepared its monopropellant engine valves for opening to fire the Hydrazine out of the spacecraft over the catalyst to impend an approximate 8.7 m/s of delta v. Mission control waited as data began to stream in from the accelerometers, indicating that the thrust had begun, less than 10 seconds later, the engine shut down. Using the Doppler shift of the radio signal from the spacecraft, the course correction was a success. Less than 5 hours later, Nostradamus 3 repeated the same sequence of events.

Following this maneuver, both spacecraft were put back to sleep for the long trip through the inner solar system, going closer to the Sun than the planet Eve throughout its orbit on their mission to catch up with the planet. At around 4 days prior to the dominant body of their trajectory shifting from the Sun to Eve herself, both spacecraft were awoken. Spending 2 days to ensure that both spacecraft were healthy, particularly on Nostradamus 2. Following a successful test program for Nostradamus 2, commands were sent to 3 to allow for it to fire its engine one more time. Expending the remaining of its propellant, Nostradamus 3 set itself on a course for a 90 second date with the asteroid moon of Gilly.

At the same time, the trench devised a maneuver for Nostradamus 2 to expend its propellant to lengthen its flyby of Eve. Expending the rest of its propellant to give us the longest time possible to perform research on the purple planet before us.

First image transmitted back from Nostradamus 2, approaching Eve after its slowdown burn.

As the planet loomed larger and larger in her cameras, Nostradamus 2 began to orient itself to face the planet, at its closest approach its maneuvering thrusters fired once more, angling it to observe the passage of the Sun between the layers of Eve's atmosphere, giving a green haze.

Now out of communication, out of sunlight the spacecraft held this attitude until the solar panels picked up the sun once more, the first Evian sunrise from Kafrican cameras for probably over a century, that is of course, unless there are still colonists down there. These questions burned in the minds of all those on the ground during the 13 minute long blackout, as the Spacecraft began to see the light of the Sun once again.

Nostradamus 2 proved to the Kafrican spaceflight community that we could go interplanetary once more, that we can do all the other things, even if they are more difficult than they ever had been. It was now on Nostradamus 3, which was approaching its closest distance to the planet Eve as its forerunner, 2, left the system onto a non-equatorial plane of the Solar System.

Nostradamus 3 at closest approach to Eve

As the purple planet remained a small part of the camera's field of view on the Nostradamus 3 spacecraft, the sequence of events it would need to perform during the critical, yet incredibly fast, flyby of Gilly it would perform was being uplinked to its computer. Pointing itself at Gilly to validate that it knew where the object was, tracking it's center with the cameras as it approached, with a speed of around 7 km/s at closest approach, it would traverse the diameter of the body in only 9 seconds.

Nostradamus 3 reorients its cameras to lock onto the Moon Gilly.

It comes at a time when the Kafrican Astronomical Society (KAS) is debating if Gilly is even big enough to be classified as a Moon, with an SOI radius of only 300km, it is very much smaller than even some nations on the planet Kerbin, Gilly can be fit numerous times even in the island of Diosca. It is miraculous that it was discovered so early in the history of Kerbin's exploration of the solar system. A body so small should generally not be seen at such far distances.

As Gilly grew larger at a pace unmatched by any other body in the solar system, Nostradamus 3 began snapping images at a rate of one every five seconds. This rate showed how fast the spacecraft truly was going against the small, semi-spherical backdrop of a barren moon.

Before the encounter was even registered by mission control, a product of the time delay between communications with the spacecraft, it had left the SOI of the small rock and was proceeding into deep space once more via Eve's gravity well. Yet there was still enough time for a family photo of the Evian system.

As the Sun once more blessed the Nostradamus 3's solar panels with electricity generating photons, its cameras still aimed at the small space rock it had just briefly flirted with for only just a fleeting moment. It captured a series of images, a family portrait of the planet that once held life to so many Kafricans, a Moon that once held life of a select few, the Evian system, in all her purple glory.

We may never know the fate of the Grestinians, the fate of the Wo'vians and the fate of the many other brave colonists who conquered the planet Eve. Yet, there is a chance, however fleeting, that one day, we will be able to tell our children what happened to the Nostrodamus Colony on the planet Eve. After the success of the Nostradamus dual flyby mission, further missions are being planned, Nostradamus 4 will be an orbiting spacecraft, launched scheduled to be launched on the all new powerful deep space lifter, the Tylo III. The mission will have a much higher mass budget for science and exploration. There has been rumors in the Kafrican Space Program that we may even send a lander to the surface of Eve.

Glory to the United States of Central Kafrica.
God bless the United States of Kafrica.
To those who have died in the pursuit of exploration, now and forever, the collective domain of Kerbalkind.