Andes Orbital Couriers

Andes Orbital Couriers was founded in Valparaíso in 2144 with a simple promise: if it fits in a crate and it is urgent, it gets there first. The company carries medicines, spare parts, legal documents and data cores between Earth orbit, Luna, Mars and Ceres.

Andes runs the largest Aurora Mk II fleet in the system, with 22 interceptors. The Aurora is a 28-metre single-pilot courier with 4 tonnes of cargo space and a deuterium-helium-3 drive that reaches 1,450 km/s while burning only 2.1 tonnes per 100 AU. With a 60 AU range, it covers the entire inner system and the Belt. At 38.5 million credits each, Andes found the Aurora cheaper to run per delivery than chartering space on bulk freighters.

Five Kestrel shuttles act as feeder craft, carrying parcels from ground spaceports in Valparaíso and Austin up to the courier dock at L5. Couriers rotate pilots every trip, since the Aurora's one-person cockpit is cramped for long hauls. Andes keeps a pilot roster of more than 90, many of whom trained on Sparrows at Southern Cross before moving to the faster interceptor.

Customers can track every Aurora in real time, and the company guarantees a refund if a priority parcel to Mars takes longer than five days.

In 2186 an Andes Aurora delivered a replacement reactor controller from L5 to the Olympus Ring in 3 days and 14 hours, a commercial record. Lucía Ferreira and Rafael Quispe of Halcyon's Valparaíso engineering campus worked on the Mk II upgrade.