April 1953, Kerbinia Kosmodrone.
The Red Herring mk. 2 was launched a few days ago – while being an observation satellite, it has not been deemed classified, and the photographer from the Ministry of Culture was exceedingly excited when he was able to take a picture of it just prior to launch, and in full daylight no less!
Werner haven’t got the whole stable orbital insertion down entirely though, and while it got into orbit, it was dipping slightly into the atmosphere at its lowest point – Bill and Bob are currently taking bets on whether it runs out of battery or looses orbit completely first – in either case, Werner assures me that it should allow us to monitor the world for a few weeks.
And monitor it did! The first image of Illyrien were taken on the first orbit, passing over the ocean just to the west. As can be seen, they are a quite wasteful people, who does not seem to enjoy the pretty night sky – as evident by the amount of artificial light.
The near perfect polar orbit allows the satellite to monitor all of the world on a daily basis, and we detected active launch sites both to the immediate south-west and south-east of Kerbinia – our Ministry of Intelligence is planning to investigate these sites in time though – but for now, our focus is on the Illyriens.
As a consequence of our monitoring, we now have a number of scientific measurements taken from all over the planet – and we still expect to collect more as the last patches of our planet is passed.
Signed,
Gene Kerman.
Kerbinia Space Agency 