Outbound Flight Project

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In the fictional Star Wars universe, the Outbound Flight Project was an exploration venture commissioned by the Jedi, most notably Jedi Master Jorus C'baoth, in the waning days of the Old Republic, after Palpatine became Chancellor, but prior to the Clone Wars.

The Outbound Flight Project is the subject of Timothy Zahn's novel of the same name, Outbound Flight.

[edit] Overview

The purpose of the project was to seek extragalactic life and plant new colonies beyond Republic space by exiting the galaxy through the Unknown Regions and Chiss space, though Jorus C'baoth also sincerely wanted to find a Jedi named Vergere, who had gone missing in the Unknown Regions. Palpatine, however, had his own agenda for the project, seeing it as an opportune way to dispose of C'baoth, who was an obstruction to his plans to gain control of the Republic.

The ship comprised six Dreadnaught capital ships around a central storage core. Its crew consisted of six Jedi Masters, twelve Jedi Knights, and fifty thousand colonists and their families. Each of the six Dreadnaughts was detachable, so that if the crew chose to found colonies in the Unknown Regions or beyond, a Dreadnaught could be assigned to the new colony for transport and defence.

The mission set out from the planet Yaga Minor. On their way through Chiss space, the amalgamation of ships was attacked and crippled by Chiss Commander Mitth'raw'nuruodo through the machinations of Palpatine's right-hand-man Kinman Doriana, and it crashed within the Redoubt, an area with a high concentration of nebulae being fortified as a last refuge of the Chiss.

The crash site was discovered nearly 50 years later by Chiss explorers. They decided to turn the wreck over to the New Republic, represented by Luke Skywalker. It turned out that the wreck had a large group of survivors left in it. The survivors, along with Luke and Mara, were attacked by a race of aliens who had been defeated by the Chiss and Outbound Flight. Luke and Mara managed to defeat the aliens, called the Vagaari, and relocated the survivors to the planet Nirauan.

It is possible that, had the mission been a success, the Republic would have had early warning of the approaching Yuuzhan Vong.