Novella · 2030 · Helsinki
Close Approach
A standalone novella
Helsinki, 2030. A piece of debris no one should know exists. Eight engineers. One night to keep a fleet of satellites in orbit.
The story
When two dead satellites collide thirty-one hours before her shift starts, flight dynamics engineer Dara Kallio walks into a developing crisis at the Helsinki ops centre of Valo Space, a Finnish Earth observation startup. Her job for the next nine hours: build a fleet-wide avoidance plan against a debris cluster sweeping through her constellation, and execute it before the first conjunction window closes.
The plan she builds is correct. The plan she executes is correct. And then a secondary collision invalidates everything — including the orbit she just nudged her oldest satellite into.
Close Approach is a procedural novella about competence under pressure, the gap between what an automated system knows and what an engineer carries in her head, and the cost of a decision that was right under one set of facts.