Phase 2 Plotting Begins for Extremis Program

Since Phase One wrapped up late last year mission planners for the Extremis program have been busy analyzing the 584 feasible trajectories that were found to visit multiple planets. The initial requirements for further study in Phase Two were a mission length of less than 10 years and a Δv requirement of less than 5km/s. The Δv requirement was lowered to just 3km/s after some additional development work from the Ascension program engineering team gave a clearer picture of how much the rocket could potentially lift into orbit. With these requirements, only 68 were picked for Phase Two trajectory plotting. Within all those possible missions is a visit to every single planet, but the pickings are unsurprisingly slim for Plock and Moho with one mission each that could potentially fly by them, thankfully not in the same year. Phase Two will potentially give us a better idea of the viability of most of these missions, and we will have to see afterwards if additional searching is needed to fill any fly by gaps. We expect to hear results by May or June.