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Jupiter Mission – Milestone

August 12th, 2012 | Posted in Short Stories | Comments Off on Jupiter Mission – Milestone

From the Captain’s log USS Discovery, Sat Nov 10, 2012 16:15:18 GMT

Today marks a milestone in our journey as we cross the orbit of Mars and head out into the asteroid belt.

The red planet itself is nowhere near this point in it’s orbit.  Where Jupiter appears to be in front of us, Mars is well behind us to the right as we face forward.  By the time it is in this neighborhood several months from now we will be on far side of the asteroid belt.

Over the last few months Jupiter has slowly appeared to drift from left to right across the view ahead.  This is because it’s orbit is roughly circular and ours is an elongated elliptical one and we continue to face the direction of our flight path.

By the time we arrive in Jupiter space the giant planet will have traveled approximately one quarter of the way around it’s orbit from where it is now.

After going over tracking and navigational data with Hal and mission control I have decided that a mid-course correction is not required at this point.  I expect that it will not be necessary until we reach the halfway point in our trajectory.

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