Colonial Cutter Finale (Homage to Cassini)
15 Sep 2017LongDistanceClara
Day 4: Back to the bubble!
A cold morning on the bridge!
I didn't really get a chance to take any shots of the Veil West nebula on arrival last night - was pretty much asleep at the wheel! So first order of business today was to get back up into low orbit and get some shots. We'd set down on a moon about 300kls from the jump-in point and a long way from the companion star, so light pollution wasn't really an issue and the nebula had a chance to really strut its stuff:
SLF stowed away and course plotted for home. Was astonished several jumps in to find an undiscovered ELW - Veil West is a very popular tourist location, being situated so close to the bubble and at this point is heavily mapped, so to find this ELW was quite the surprise! A quick orbit and a cheeky pic - is it just me or does that landmass look a bit India-like? Or maybe the space crazy is setting in...
After all that jumping, it felt like we were back in the bubble in no time - I always forget just how close Veil West is! - and it was very tempting to head straight back to the barn. One order of business first though - course plotted for Sol.
Fair warning, I'm going to go full geek here! Earlier on today, after over two decades in space, the Cassini probe started its final descent into the atmosphere of Saturn, signal lost as it burnt up relaying its final data. I've been following this glorious little beastie for years and it has relayed some utterly jaw-dropping imagery - the "mysterious hexagon" of Saturn, the beautiful jets from Enceladus and some wonderful shots of the perturbation of Saturn's rings by the many moons in orbit. For me though, the real crowd pleaser was the Huygens descent to the moon of Titan and the truly awesome images (and audio!) it relayed back as it fell towards a pretty amazing landscape.
As unbelievably cheesy as it was, I couldnt resist flying over to Saturn in ED and taking a commemorative screenie
Unbelievably amazing job and huge congratulations to all those involved in the Cassini project!
Mission Accomplished
Postcard moment over, swung the Cassandra around and headed for dock. Somehow managed to squeeze past the bizarrely heavy traffic around the port (genuinely felt like there was a Beluga convention going on) and set her down. Conclusions? "In every measurable way" (
), for exploration, the Clair far exceeds the Cassandra - and I don't care! Was a real pleasure to fly that big ol' lumbering gal and just cruise jump after jump. I'm not about to sell every ship I own, but this will definitely not be the last outing for the Cass...But for right now, time for R&R. This is Clara, signing off
