Kerbal Space Administration

Year 19, Day 109 Those "updates" that KSA told us would happen to the KSC are finally done, expanding the KSC and adding a nearby airport for tourism, along with more exciting news! The Kerbal Space Center (KSC) has been greatly expanded, adding a second Vehicle Assembly Building, SMAB building for construction of solid boosters, orbiter processing facility for better and more efficient Kerb-Shuttle processing, hangars, and much more. Other than the major improvements to the KSC, a new international airport was established not too far from the KSC, called the Kape KSC International Airport. It was built to have tourism from across Kerbin come into/near the KSC. AND alongside all of that, a new research foundation was set up: the Search for Extrasolar High-Intelligence (SESHI), a foundation made to search far and wide for signs of intelligence beyond Kerbin. In other words, trying to find alien life. They have already set up outposts and radio antennas in the KSC, at high mo...

Year 19, Day 4 KSA has said nothing more of this event; all they have said is that major updates are currently underway at the Kerbal Space Center. They said this will advance them forward a bit and give them more room to do whatever they want. Judging by what they have said, it's likely that this is some expansion project of sorts. It's estimated to take some months.

Year 18, Day 238 KSA just launched the deepest deep-space probe to have ever been conceived by Kerbalkind. It'll take extremely long to reach its destination, likely over a decade, maybe two. This is the New Reliance probe, going to the dwarf planet Plock. KSA decided to make and launch this probe because they were tired of looking at terrible and grainy KST (Kerman Space Telescope) images from afar, and wanted to look at Plock up close for the first time ever, getting a clearer view of the dwarf planet and its moon, Karen. The KSA said in a statement: "Yes, we made this probe so we could see Plock up close. But that still doesn't make this a 'because we wanted to' kind of mission. We will also collect valuable scientific data from the outer reaches of the solar system, potentially making us more ready for when we go interstellar in the far future." We have no exact clue when the probe will arrive at Plock, but it will likely be about 16-18 years until arr...

Year 18, Day 215 KSA has finally returned to the Kerb-Shuttle after the Endurance shuttle disaster (mission name KS-13) of it disintegrating during reentry with the new and improved shuttle design, Discovery! Discovery was made only because of how poorly the KS-13 mission went at its end, and its first mission, KS-14, was made to right what went wrong AND also as a safety flight of sorts after Endurance disintegrated upon reentry. Surprisingly, the flight and every part of it (launch, orbit, reentry) went perfectly and no issues were reported during, before, or after the flight. All this was, was a flight of 4 Kerbonauts where they launched, orbited Kerbin a few times, and then landed back at the KSC after reentry. The specific changes in the design were better coated heat tiles, stronger insulation glue, more robust screws, and countless more pre-flight checks. Hopefully the Kerb-Shuttle program continues from here on out, but no one can say for sure if the program will last much lo...

Year 18, Day 113 After years of travelling, the MESSAGE spacecraft has finally arrived at the closest planet to the Sun, Moho! It arrived just about a month ago, and has already given us comprehensive and readable maps of the surface of Moho and useful scientific data about what it's like at Moho. MESSAGE took so long to get to Moho because of the several gravity assist flybys it had to do at both Eve and Moho itself even. But after all of this, MESSAGE finally was able to slow down enough to orbit Moho! Ever since that time a month ago, it has been sending back amazing pictures and orbital maps, along with science data as well, like temperature, gravity, magnetosphere readings, pressure, and more. It's hard to say how long MESSAGE will be alive; however, we can say that when it does die, it will be deliberately crashed into the surface of Moho as it cannot function anymore by that point. But until then, MESSAGE will continue to pump out data and pictures for as long as it ha...

Year 16, Day 288 Having entered the space industry as a private company, the newly founded space organization SpaceK recently unveiled its new payload rocket, the GDLV5 (Generally Designed Launch Vehicle 5), in cooperation with KSA and C7 Aerospace Division! The GDLV5 rocket was designed to carry MULTIPLE payloads to LKO (Low Kerbin Orbit) as well as being able to carry one small payload to geostationary orbit if needed. This is new, because we have had rockets that can carry multiple payloads to orbit before, but not this many! This rocket can carry up to 8 small KubeSat satellites into LKO. Rockets before this could only carry about a maximum of 4 of those same satellites. On top of this, the rocket is HUGE, standing about half the height of the Vehicle Assembly Building. It's essentially a flying building. It recently had its first test flight, which went super well, and just after that, it had its first true deployment mission, where it deployed 6 KubeSat satellites into LKO,...

Year 16, Day 267 Finally, after years of travelling, the Kassini orbiter/probe along with its Tekto lander companion Kuygens has arrived into orbit around the "Ringed Giant" planet, Sarnus! It only entered orbit about two weeks ago, but has made so many discoveries already about Sarnus and its moons. It discovered that the moon Ovok, alongside being very small, is also shaped highly ovoid, looking somewhat like an egg. But that's only one of the many discoveries it has found out. It has also discovered: Tekto has extremely large lakes on its surface, likely composed of liquid methane, not water Sarnus likely has a mostly solid, part liquid core deep below its clouds Sarnus is far warmer than we originally thought And so much more than even this. It's truly crazy what Kassini has already discovered about Sarnus and its moons by itself, but alongside that, also within its first two weeks of orbiting, the Kuygens probe attached to its side was detached and sent off to ...

Year 16, Day 225 It has just been confirmed that the long awaited Opportunistic (nickname: Oppo) rover has recently arrived at the Midland Sea on Duna! It arrived just yesterday, and the KSA was very eager to announce it; this was one of their biggest projects since they put Kalileo into Jool's orbit awhile ago. Oppo touched down with surprisingly little drama; just a few tense minutes of bouncing and rolling before it finally settled on the reddish sands. The rover is loaded with instruments to study Duna, including but not limited to: Mystery Goo containment unit Barometer Thermometer And even an accelerometer to study seismic data. So far, these instruments have proven very useful on the mission and have given us valuable information about what it's like over there on Duna. It has honestly made Duna look a lot less mysterious than we thought and we now realize a bit more that Duna resembles Kerbin in so many ways. Its first moves were cautious: a few short drives to make s...

Year 16, Day 102 Unfortunately, the maiden voyage of the newly built Kerb-Shuttle Endurance has failed and gone horribly wrong; it claimed the lives of seven Kerbonauts. On Day 100 of this year, the Endurance Kerb-Shuttle was launched for the first time on its maiden voyage, mission KS-13. The mission itself was meant as just a science mission, mostly just studying zero-g and its effects on a bunch of different stuff. That part of the mission itself actually went well and we gained a lot of valuable scientific knowledge from it, but, the reentry of the shuttle was... not very good, to say the least. The crew of KS-13 was as follows: Mission Commander Rick Kerman Pilot William Kerman Mission Specialist Michael Kerman Mission Specialist David M. Kerman Mission Specialist Kalpana Kerman Mission Specialist Laurel Kerman Payload Specialist Ilan Kerman Upon the launch of the shuttle on KS-13, camera operators noticed that a piece of what seemed to be insulation seemingly broke off from th...

Year 16, Day 90 The KSA has just unveiled their new Duna rover: Opportunistic.

Year 16, Day 82 The latest and, unfortunately, likely last update has been added to the Kerbal Space Station. A robotic arm! It was sent to the station because the KSA needed a way to move supplies around in space without needing a bunch of Kerbonauts out on spacewalk at the same time just so they can move 100 pounds of Kerbonaut... waste, if you know what I mean. Or other supplies too. The KS-Arm2 has proven itself surprisingly useful already. It's basically a long, mechanical arm with a claw on the end, but somehow it can grab anything from storage containers to entire modules and swing them around like a toddler with a new toy. During its first test, it successfully moved a fuel tank from one docking port to another without anyone floating off into the void, which is already a victory in the KSA’s book. It’s slow, a little jerky, and occasionally likes to spin things the wrong way, but honestly... that’s half the fun. Technically, the arm had to be put together in two separat...

Year 16, Day 77 The KS-10 mission just completed and it was probably one of the KSA's strangest experiments in space of all time. The experiment, officially dubbed ITSE (Ionosphere Tether Space Experiment), was meant to actually measure changes in the ionosphere of Kerbin, a layer of the atmosphere that is electrically charged for some reason. It's very high up and there's virtually no air up there, so a probe can orbit for some time before it falls down and burns up in the more dense atmosphere. As for the probe itself, it's basically an extremely long conductive cable held in place by an enormous winch. It basically conducts electricity from all the charged particles in the ionosphere, and detects changes in the electrical flow and raw power. Basically a glorified strip of aluminum foil in orbit. The launch of the shuttle itself was spectacular! No issues at all, same for the splashdown. That's right, this mission had to splash down in the ocean because of a sm...

Year 16, Day 16 It has just been confirmed by the KSA that the NEAR (New Era Asteroid Runner) probe has just successfully landed on asteroid 454 Keros... really!   After the mission to the asteroid launching some hundred days ago or so, it finally arrived last week at 454 Keros, a relatively large, potentially harmful near-Kerbin asteroid (NKA) with a size on the range of Class D objects.   As of now, the asteroid does not pose any real risk to Kerbin but is still an object close to Kerbin and orbital paths do change suddenly from collisions and such. But given the asteroid's remote location, any orbital change is extremely unlikely.   As for the actual probe, it's meant to orbit and land on an asteroid, specifically built for the conditions of 454 Keros. It's built with four 1x2 solar panels on the top to gain power from the Sun, and has four 100-point batteries as well. As for scientific instruments, it has a gravioli detector for detecting gravity, thermometer, and M...

Year 16, Day 2  Finally, after so long without having satellite maps of Kerbin and the Mun, we FINALLY have some with the KSA's new satellites, Kerbserver v1 and the Munar Reconnaissance Orbiter!   These satellites were designed for one thing and one thing only: to observe Kerbin and the Mun and produce high-quality color satellite maps of both worlds. It's nothing too complex, really. Just some HD maps of Kerbin and the Mun, but STILL, this will allow us to have actual color maps of the entirety of Kerbin and the Mun! In fact, a company on Kerbin, Codac, along with the help of Kerbal Mapping Ltd. will allow these maps to be put on some sort of webpage soon, thanks to the new advanced radio and antennae features achieved on Kerbin recently, known as the Internet. So definitely stay tuned for updates on that!