In early 2103, Commander Evelyn Wu of the colony ship Shennong — the first vessel of the Pioneer Fleet — arrived at Ceres for resupply and sat down with The Belt Times’ Chen Yifei for the first public interview. Two years after Fleet Commander Rosalind Kovács stood at the same port and laid out the three-leg Jovian mission, Wu arrived with confirmation that the mission’s first leg was complete: Pathfinder had reached Jovian space.
The Pioneer Fleet
Shennong is a colony-class hull — two to three times Pathfinder’s frigate mass — built from the same design lineage at Deimos on a parallel track. Pathfinder’s hulls cleared first (8–12 months construction); Pioneer’s took longer (closer to two years) due to mass, systems redundancy, and the nature of the payload. “You don’t rush a ship that’s carrying people who didn’t sign up to be tested on,” Wu said.
The ship’s complement: 180 crew (pilots, engineers, reactor techs, medical) and just under 1,000 colonists and specialists — agricultural engineers, hydroponics specialists, fabrication crews. Roughly 1,100 people total. “It’s not a frigate. It’s closer to a small township that happens to move.”
On propulsion: the Kuzmin Drive scales with reactor output, and Shennong’s reactor section scales with the hull. The ship could hold a full standard gravity the entire transit. It doesn’t — it cruises at roughly three-quarters gravity and puts the difference into cargo: hab modules, hydroponics stock, farming equipment. “Nobody aboard is uncomfortable at three-quarters gravity, and everybody eats better on the other end for the trade.”
The Mission
Ganymede is the mission, unchanged from Kovács’s 2100 announcement. Everything aboard — the hydroponics stock, the fabrication crews, the agricultural engineers — exists to break ground on the farm colony. The ship’s name, Shennong (神农), refers to the mythical Chinese sage who taught humanity to farm. “The name picked itself,” Wu said.
Unlike Pathfinder, which spent years working up at Ceres, Pioneer has no such delay. The drive’s been proven, Pathfinder’s been out there for years without incident, and Pioneer operates under direct UN Charter authority — no permit queue, no Luna filing. “Every hour we sit here is an hour of consumables and an hour of everyone aboard wondering why we’re still parked.”
The Signal
Wu closed the interview by breaking news that had arrived during Shennong’s final approach to Ceres: Pathfinder had reached Jovian space. Both frigates confirmed, on course for Europa — the first target under the tasking Kovács laid out at Ceres in 2100. The signal had been relayed onward to Oracle and to Governor Liu Wenjing’s office. Wu’s disclosure on The Belt Times was the first public confirmation.
“Kovács earned that headline,” Wu said. “I just happened to be the one carrying the relay when it came through.”
Tianshui Wire Network and UN Weekly independently confirmed the Pathfinder signal shortly afterward.