Planet Steinfurt

Planet Steinfurt
Location	5F, Cologne Rheinland
Technical information
Docking	No
Terrain	Desert
Diameter	14,157 km
Mass	8.21 x 10e24 kg
Temperature	-31°C to 63°C
Escape velocity	18.74 km/sec

Steinfurt is a major planet in the Cologne system, orbitting closely to the system's young sun. Originally surveyed by a Daumann prospecting expedition in late 750 A.S., the planet has been marked by the company as "scarce in mineable resources". Additional data compiled by automated probes revealed that the system itself was frequented by a large number of comets and orbitting dwarf planets, which were confirmed to regularly hit Steinfurt owing to its large gravitational force. The planet was thus deemed hazardous and uninhabitable and the expedition turned to the asteroid fields on the fringes of the system.

The planet was largely forgotten until late 803, when Kruger Minerals, desperate for new mining grounds, began their own surveys within Cologne. Unlike the preceding Daumann surveyors, the Kruger expedition focused on the planet itself and eventually discovered that the frequent collisions with the planet surface had launched large amounts of metals in large chunks of rock from the planet's surface into its orbit, where the chunks decayed into extensive rings of debris. ALG soon agreed to finance a resource gathering and processing project in return for a share of the profits from the enterprise and planet Steinfurt was soon the first planetary body in Sirius to be mined without the need for atmospheric entry.