Washington 1 Lands on Duna (Amiss in 0.19)

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Washington 1, led by the fearless rookie Aldory, landed on the surface of Duna on September 30th, 2002 KTC (I like to assign my missions start dates) just in the red area past the South Pole.

The mission was flown on a Carmen 1B lander/launch vehicle, which does not have such a great reliability record . Upon launch, when the second stage separated, the central engine was exploded for no apparent reason. However the fearless leaders at KSEP (Kerbal Space Exploration Program) were able to transfer the fuel to the outer engine. However because of the large size of the vehicle, the transfer stage was used a bit earlier than on other rover/probe missions.

In the meantime, the crew at KSEP spent their time enjoying watching their multi-trillion dollar Herschel space probe being ejected from the solar system by Tylo .

The lander successfully landed and the chutes were repacked, however, no real exploration of the area was done. There was not any large rocks in the area, and the lander seemed to have landed in a large open area. The target location was a crater near the equator, but to save precious fuel, which the Carmen 1B is not good at , the lander did not target its landing location.

We took off, equatorialized our orbit, then flew home to Kerbin. We touched down off the South Pole.

It was a nice mission overall, but we need to do it buttloads better next time.

There were 3 guys, Aldory, Steve, and Ribbles, but I photographed this as Aldory's captain photo.