USS Aurora

Vessel Name:	USS Aurora
Registry:	NCC-72321
Starship Class:	Nova-class
Starship Type:	Light Research Cruiser
Status:	Active
Purpose:	Short-term research missions
Constructed:	Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards
Commissioned:	September 20th, 2370
Dedication:	Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done.” -Robert A. Heinlein
Dimensions:	Length: 160 m Height: 35 m Width: 43 m
Mass:	220,000 metric tons
Decks:	8
Standard Crew Complement	Officers: 15 Enlisted: 65
Cruising Speed	Warp Factor 6.0
Flank Speed	Warp Factor 7.0
Burst Speed	Warp Factor 8.0 (Sustainable for 1 hour)
Armaments:	(11x) Type-X Phaser Strip Array (2x) Mk-95 Photon Torpedo Tubes
Defences:	FSQ Primary Force Field / Deflector Control Systems Standard Duranium / Tritanium Single hull. Standard level Structural Integrity Field
Auxiliary Craft	(2x) Type-8 Shuttlecraft USS Hopkins USS Koch (2x) Type-9 Shuttlecraft USS Banting USS Fleming (2x) Workbee Hopit Peef

The USS Aurora (NCC-72321) was a Federation Nova-class starship assigned to Starbase 39-Sierra in the Alpha Centauri Sector Block.

History

Construction, Launch and Commissioning

As one of the first ships of the Nova-class, closely following the USS Nova (NX-72230) herself, Starfleet Command assigned the USS Aurora to Starbase 39-Sierra on February 5th, 2368; the very same day her ‘keel’ was laid down at the Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards alongside those of the USS Anticipation (NCC-72319) and the USS Asimov (NCC-72320). Only two months into the assembly of the primary hull however, a problem presented itself with one of the pre-fabricated modules of the three sister ships. During the construction process of the prototype USS Nova these modules had all been built by hand but, for the mass production of the Nova-class ships, the design was copied into pre-fabricated modules that could easily be joined together in the orbital shipyards. One of these modules came with a very miniscule, but nonetheless very critical miscalculation that would slightly misalign the Secondary Deflector Bay on Deck 3 with the Primary Deflector Generator Bay on Deck 6. This forced Utopia Planitia to recalculate the designs and, as they subsequently fabricated entirely new modules, introduced a delay of several months.