𝐆𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐓𝐑𝐎𝐋! | ateez

new horizons (bidding goodbye to the person you once were)

OCTOBER 24TH, 2120 A.D.
—KQ SPACE ADMINISTRATION.

orange definitely isn't his colour, seonghwa thinks, picking at the velcro on his jumpsuit pockets.

today is the day.

the day eight boys have circled on their calendars in violent red marker- the day they board the spacecraft aurora; they've been through the protocol a million and one times, spoken to seemingly everyone in the entire agency, and said their final goodbyes to their family. seonghwa, like the rest of his team, has traded in his comfortable royal blue jumpsuit for a neon orange, a rare sight officers only get to see once every few years. he may as well have worn a huge sign reading "i'm going off to space in a bit!"

mission sunrise, or as mingi had affectionately dubbed, mission 'save the universe' was a lot easier said than done. the journey they were about to embark on was estimated to take fourteen years and six months to complete. from earth, they would travel to each planet to collect and analyse data, and send back reports to the KQSA and government scientists.

by gathering resources, collecting data and developing a better understanding about their vast universe, with the new technology KQSA scientists have been working on, they had the power change the entire human population to adapt to live on other planets.

that was the ultimate goal- keep the human species alive for billions of years, well after this generation was dead. over the past few decades, humans, as a whole, have become exceedingly greedy and ravenous for more time. technology was advancing at an unprecedented pace, and the human race wanted more power, and to reign over the universe that was made too complicated for them to try to understand.

(he believes the fear of the unknown is what made the human race so power-crazy, and why everyone was so fixated upon the outcome of this mission.)

the sun will explode in approximately five billion years, once the hydrogen fuel at it's core is exhausted. scientists aimed to push the time to six billion, then to ten, and with the recent technology produced by the secret china-korea space alliance (an under-wraps deal to work together to keep the species going), the higher-ups at KQSA were determined to find a way for humans to thrive for as long as possible.

this would be achieved by moving to different planets further away from the sun; as the sun grows hotter and hotter, earth will become less habitable. in five billion years, the sun will begin it's helium-burning process, and in turn, transform into a red giant star. whilst this process will kill all life forms on mercury, venus, and earth, it may allow life to finally thrive on other planets.

earth on mars, the head scientist used to tell seonghwa, or earth on europa, or enceladus, or even neptune.

the research on the solar system team sunrise would be gathering would aid scientists to figure out how to advance future generations and find ways to make them adapt to life on the other planets. seonghwa doesn't know exactly how (he's not the government's head scientist, funnily enough), but word had spread through the agency that they'd found a way to rewrite DNA (that's just a rumour, though).

and who knows? this data could help find ways to even save the universe. the possibilities were endless, and seonghwa's heart can't help but quicken it's pace at that thought.

seonghwa, in his spare time, likes to read about past exploratory space missions that've changed the world, mostly from NASA. a hundred years ago, they were the biggest space administration, but KQSA had quickly stolen that title, and the government had been more lenient on budget cuts, since this mission would be highly beneficial for the world, so mission sunrise had been granted all the supplies and more they could ever need.