Exploring Barnard's Planet in Apollo-Mir

Black clouds swirled as we entered in our ship;
it had been long, this interstellar trip,
but now we entered through the atmosphere,
to land our spacecraft called, Apollo-Mir.

The U.S. and Russia combined as one
to explore the planet ‘round Barnard’s sun;
the name, Apollo-Mir seemed apropos--
the cold war ended many years ago.

The surface of the planet soon appeared,
and the Apollo-Mir was gently steered
to a controlled landing on the planet;
the rocks nearby appeared to be granite.

Of course, this was just a first impression--
we had to commence the science session
of testing and experiments galore
to learn what Barnard’s Planet had in store.

We donned our suits, got some things unloaded;
the rocks were curiously eroded.
The surface bore no dust like on the moon,
but had the feel of honey on a spoon.

Perhaps the strangest thing was all the lakes;
we were well trained, yet we did double takes.
It was not water, like one might assume,
but liquid methane, with a rising plume.

We made our tests, collected samples, too;
we were Earth’s first long distance space-flight crew.
We traveled far to blaze a new frontier,
and then returned in our Apollo-Mir.

[SR: 10] (Lines: 28)