The Hermes Program

[Schetefan]

I wanted to share my latest, still ongoing mission with you: The Hermes Program. The reports about this mission I will write as news by one of Kerbins news agencies.

 

After the recent successes of our space program with landing on the Mun in the Apollo Program, landing on Minmus in the Athena Program and the setup of our first space station in Kerbins orbit with the Spacelab I a new project was started: the Hermes Program, a set of missions to take on Duna.

 

This project will be executed in three stages, all in different transfer windows, so the execution of this will take several years. Thanks to Walt Kerman we can now present you the plans on the different stages:

Stage 1: In this first stage, the exploration stage, ScanSat satellites and probes for Duna and Ike together with a rover for Duna will be launched and sent to the Duna system. Depending on the transmitted scientific data the program will be abandoned or if the data is promising the project will be moved to the next stage.

Stage 2: In this second stage, the preparation stage, everything needed for a manned mission to Duna will be transferred to Duna. The requirements for a manned Duna mission are: a space station –called Pegasus Station-, bases on Ike and Duna –Jump Zero and the Echo Base-, an orbital taxi –Mule-, the Duna Launch Vehicle and the Duna Landing Vehicle. If every system reports that it is working correctly at the end of this stage the project will be moved in the final project stage.

Stage 3: The third and final stage is the manned stage and after the assembly of the Hermes in orbit of Kerbin, it will be used to transfer 30 kerbonauts to Duna. During this stage the station and bases in the Duna system will be manned and the first manned landing on Duna will happen.

 

At the moment the Hermes Program is in the exploration stage and over the last months everything was prepared to make the launches last week possible. Now the probes are on an escape trajectory out of Kerbins sphere of influence and on their way to Duna. Only because of Walt Kermans great work we can now proudly present you exclusive footage of the launches and the transfer burns:

 

As soon as we get our hands on new information on the program we will inform you.

Edited February 24, 2016 by Schetefan

[loch.ness]

I'll be watching this as you go.  Best of luck.

 

By the way, do you have any good references / resources for making mission patches?  My artistic skills are terrible but I'd like to start making them for my upcoming Kometka and Pleiades missions.

[Schetefan]

Thanks loch.ness.

I got my mission patch Templates here.

[Schetefan]

The next part of the story:

Over the last half year the probes and satellites there on their way to Duna and now they finally arrived. After the burns of the transfer vehicles to achieve an orbit, the transfer vehicle for the Dunian ScanSat satellites made the burns to achieve an polar orbit and changed the circular orbit to a height around 775km before releasing its payload. After the payload was released, the transfer vehicle was deorbited and crashed into Duna, while the satellites of the payload separated and the satellites which required a lower orbit changed their orbit accordingly. After that the ScanSat satellites for Ike were transferred to Ike and placed in their required orbits. The transfer vehicle was also deorbited. These satellites are very important for the Hermes Program because they carry optical and radar instruments to draw maps of Duna and Ike, which are required to find interesting and safe landing spots for the probes and the manned missions. As the satellites need time to collect enough data for a map that is accurate enough to enable unmanned landings the probes are left in orbit and will be landed when the maps are accurate enough. Thanks to Walt Kerman we got our hands on an overview of our satellites in the Duna system and we also got exclusive footage of the orbital maneuvers.