Location: Milky Way / Artemis Tau / Knossos System / Fifth planet
Description[]
A small hydrogen-helium gas giant, Archanes has been developed as a full-featured, if modest, stopover for ships hauling refined materials from Therum. In addition to a powerful magnetic field to dump drive charge, Archanes has a largely automated infrastructure of helium-3 refining and deuterium mining on its many water ice moons.
Assignments[]
- Survey: UNC: Valuable Minerals: Gas Deposit ×1 (Nitrogen)
Additional Information[]
The gas giant is featured in the news cycle when a family of tourists become stranded in its gravity well. The Sorenson family from Eden Prime were stuck in a decaying orbit around Archanes due to a ship malfunction, and their broadcasts for help and efforts to save themselves have garnered real-time media attention. They managed to repair the damage to their ship and blasted off to safety, but at the sacrifice of one of their own, Kristal Sorenson.
Trivia[]
- Archanes is named after an ancient Minoan settlement on the island of Crete.
- Archanes is too small to be a "hydrogen-helium gas giant" (William Hubbard, The New Solar System 4th ed, 1999; p. 194). It is more likely a dense "ice giant" like Neptune or Gliese 436 b.