Coelus Program

*The information presented in this article is **true for my alternate history**, but either completely false, or only partly true for real life.*

The **Coelus program** was an American manned space exploration program initiated in december of 1985, intended to land humans on the 5 major moons of Uranus - Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, and Oberon.

## Development:

USA had growing ambitions when it came to space exploration. After the scraping success of Othrys, which came dangerously close to being a complete failure several times, the American public however didn't really like the idea of another even longer mission.

First launch took place in early 1990, with the crew launching in December 1992. The transfer to Uranus in took place on 24th of December 1992.

## Mission Profile:

The mission followed the tried and tested profile of LEO assembly, followed by a Jupiter gravity assist to get to Uranus.

The ship was assembled in 310 x 275 km Low Earth Orbit. This orbit was chosen for 2 main reasons:

* To allow for a long-duration escape burn without dipping into the atmosphere.
* To prevent the unfuelled ship from decaying and falling back into orbit before it could be completed.

The expedition lasted 52 years, with astronauts returning in 2044. They were greeted to a much different space infrastructure than what existed when they left.

The Multibody Lander (ML) was used to land on the moons. And the Multibody Transfer System (MTS) (that was sometimes incorrectly called the Multibody Transfer Stage) was used to shuttle the lander between the low orbits of the moons and the mothership, where the ship docked for refuelling.

## Crew:

The ship had 3 crewmembers onboard

* Dominic Hill - 24, commander
* Caleb James - 23
* Sam Collins - 24

Some time after the Russo-American expedition to Neptune performed its departure burn, the two missions started communicating with each other. Although real-time voice communications were impossible due to signal delay, the crewmembers exchanged text and voice messages between each other, eventually forming interplanetary friendships.

## List of Launches:

In total 24 rockets were launched, 10 to assemble the ship, 13 to refuel it, and 1 that brought the crew onboard.

## List of maneuvers performed:

* Trans-Jovian Injection 6,320m/s
* Mid-course correction - 70m/s
* Uranus Orbit Insertion (1) - 1,005m/s
* Uranus Orbit Insertion (2) - 705m/s
* Uranus Orbit Insertion (3) - 1,760m/s
* Trans-Miranda Injection - 710m/s
* Miranda Orbit Injection - 1,190m/s
* Miranda Escape - 1,080m/s
* Miranda Rendezvous - 1,050m/s
* Trans-Ariel Injection - 180m/s
* Ariel Orbit Insertion - 190m/s
* Ariel Escape - 270m/s
* Ariel Rendezvous - 400m/s
* Trans-Umbriel Injection - 240m/s
* Umbriel Orbit Insertion - 240m/s
* Umbriel Escape - 250m/s
* Umbriel Rendezvous - 640m/s
* Trans-Titania Insertion - 840m/s
* Titania Orbit Insertion - 430m/s
* Titania Escape - 630m/s
* Titania Rendezvous - 620m/s
* Trans-Oberon Injection - 1,300m/s
* Oberon Orbit Insertion - 780m/s
* Oberon Escape - 760m/s
* Oberon Rendezvous - 1,100m/s
* Trans-Earth Injection - 4,800m/s
* Slowdown Maneuver - 2,500m/s

## Trivia:

This program wasn't very popular amongst the American public. At least compared to the previous space exploration programs, like Apollo or Othrys.

## Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jS3XCbYvUKg