Terra Alo

Terra Alo, or nourishing Earth, is the first human colony world. With a population of five hundred million, it is one of the most stable inner colonies, and humanity's foremost military research and development hub. The ISA stations multiple military and resupply ships on layover from Earth at Terra Alo as a staging area for fleet movements.

First Colony
"Just like Earth, but the sky is red, and two moons at night." These words spoken by founder Terrel Randal as he stepped foot onto the new colony for the first time, Terra Alo would soon be the one of the most prosperpous colonies Earth would ever establish. Abundant fresh water, fertile soil, and a nitrogen-helium, oxygen atmosphere allowed colonial farmers to grow vast amounts of food in relatively short time. From farms sprang villages, which turned into populous cities supporting cutting edge military research and new QST drives for faster ships.

With food and new resources pouring in, ship building needed to be increased to handle the surge of new colonists and supplies.Terra Alo's position sat in the center of a dozen star systems, made it a perfect choice to host ship yards from which new colonial ships would be built. In a little over ten years, Terra Alo enabled the colonization of thirteen more worlds and the expansion of human military might and population throughout the galaxy.

Terra Alo has the distinction for having the largest fresh water oceans of any colony. Millions of colonists are fed by the abudance of fishing and aquaculture of ocean based plant crops like algae and kelps. Planetary scientists still debate on how such a large terrestrial planet can support large quantities of fresh water.

Terra Alo is also noted for sharing an orbit with its sister planet Midway.

Discovery
After the develpoment of safer, more reliable QST drives, it became possible to construct a ship to house a sizable population from which a new colony would be established. After an intense ship construction and crewing effort, a planet was needed to be the site for mankind's first extrasolar colony.

After a decade long hunt, a red dwarf star system was identified as having two planets in it's habitable zone for colonization. Observations made by Earth based and space telescopes and a passing interstallar probe confirmed that the two planets had the conditions for a stable climate and liquid water. Most importantly, the planets were of the correct size, had strong planetary magnetic fields and had a habitable mix of gases at the correct pressures for humans to live on their surfaces without the aid of pressure suits or other special equipment.

With a star system to travel too, the new colony ship Constellation was launched on an expedition to the the red dwarf sytem. After a two year journey, the ship arrived safely in orbit above a prestine Earth-like world.