Malcolm, Seely, and Luly are chosen to be the crew for the next Mun mission! For the first time, they’ll attempt a landing at the Mun’s north pole! The lander has been specially outfitted with a fuel cell to provide power in the uneven polar regions.

Aurora 19 blasts off!

The Sarnus Va carries the spacecraft higher and higher…

Until the Orbital/TMI stage fires, circularizing the craft!

“Everything checks out – let’s head to Mun!”
-Malcolm

Aurora 19 will be the first polar landing at Mun – a somewhat more difficult task given the inclination, and the availability of solar power at the poles.

Aurora 19 arrives at Mun! Malcolm and Luly EVA to the lander, and head down!

“Looks pretty hilly up here, but I think we have a good landing site selection…”
-Malcolm

The Aurora 19 lander touches down!

“Time to test the new and improved Rover Deployment System!”
-Malcolm

The Rover Assembly system powers up, detaches from the lander, and gently lifts up, then off to the side of the lander!

The Rover deploys successfully!

After deployment, the drone flies off until it runs out of fuel!

“Shame that things has to go crashing down! Hey! We should use the crash from the next one of those drones to test our seismic equipment!”
-Luly

Malcolm watches as Luly plants a flag at the North Pole crater!

Then, Luly gets to business planting all the science equipment, before heading off in the rover with Malcolm!

“One little problem Mission Control! We didn’t bring a communication system! We need to start double checking our science payloads before these launches!! “
-Luly

Engineers at KSEA begin work to see if they can throw together a replacement system quickly!

“We launched one lander for Aurora 18, we should probably be able to send another one just like it! We’ll get to work asap!”
-Gene

While Mission Control explores solutions to the science equipment at Aurora 19’s polar landing, Malcolm and Luly take off in the Mun Rover!