A return to Earth is a key component of all the Lawki missions. OCA was vehemently opposed to putting people aboard a one-way flight. Our mission is to catalogue, not to colonise. Returning to the world you’d laboured to gather knowledge for is psychologically vital. You had to remember who you were doing the work for. You had to know the finite spacecraft that carried you would not be your final home. Without a restful full-circle ending awaiting you, an astronaut under duress might decide to cut the cord, to make a home on a world that was not theirs. Lawki 6 would return to Earth, our
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