First Encounter

The Heimdall has reached the edges of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and in order to ensure a safe passage through the field, the ship has shut down the main drive and is proceeding to chart a course through the scattered debris. The majority of the asteroids are big enough to be easily avoided in good time due to their massive size, but there is always the threat of smaller rocks which would be undetectable by long range scanners and can only be spotted with forward looking LIDAR. Even at this distance, Jupiters gravitational field still manages to stir the field and impacts among the asteroids are frequent, causing a cannon effect as the rocks smash into each other, sending fragments flying. During the hiatus while the immediate course is plotted, its a great chance to examine one or two of the larger rocks. Astrogeologist  Nascha Anishinaabe takes out one of the remote handling craft so she can make some tests on the surface of a quiescent asteroid. It has no detectable gravitational field, so effecting a landing is hazardous, so she elects to keep a reasonable distance and fires coring projectiles into the soft crust to return samples to the craft. Time is short however and Nascha only has a brief opportunity to make a few tests before its time to return to the Heimdall for the next leg of the journey. She hopes that the samples she does manage to collect will reveal evidence of certain elements and minerals that have been found in meteors collected on Earth, lending weight to the theory that meteors and small comets may originate in the field.