Distant World

When your shuttle had landed on the surface of this new planet, you had of course, checked the oxygen levels. Every newly discovered planet required you to know if taking your helmet off on the surface was going to kill you before you could even take a look around.

This new planet would seem mostly okay, the oxygen levels were about the sort of levels you would find on high mountain peaks on Earth. Not lethal, but enough so that taking a single step has you short of breath. Given that you planned to take more than one step on this planet, an oxygen tank would be useful. 

Thankfully, there were no toxic gases that would seep through your skin and the sun was not close enough to burn you to a crisp, so a basic jumpsuit and the oxygen mask is all you will need.

It had been hard to tell from orbit what the surface would be like. The sun really was pretty far away, enough for a twilight glow on the planet side facing it, but this planet appeared to be have two types of night. Dark and very dark. Though one plus side was the amazing night sky, you had never seen so many stars, not even in deserts on Earth with no light pollution.

However, it meant that it was pretty cold outside, not quite freeing, but it sure made you thankful your jumpsuit was properly insulated, your face was just feeling a little stiff. You bend to take a closer look at the ground, as you had suspected, dirt. The closer you had gotten to the planet revealed it was likely to not have trees or much else resembling Earth-like plants. Considering most Earth-like plants needed better sunlight, this did not surprise you.

Turning on your torch, you use it sweep your immediate area, finding more dirt, an interesting shade of reddish-brown, and a vague silhouette of something resembling a bush. You walk towards it to get a better look, and you find the first sign that this planet held life. Plants that could survive on low oxygen and very low sunlight. You take a picture with your camera, snip a sample and put the little container in one of your many pockets. 

Another sweep of your torch shows similar plants scattered around, each one a dark shade of purple. Other than a few mountains in the distance, there was not much else to look at. You finish in the area with a few samples of the dirt from patches close to and further away from the plants. With nothing else to gather samples from, you shuffle back to your shuttle to move to a new location.

Hopefully, you will find something more interesting. Like an alien civilisation? That would be nice.

Prompt: You discovered a new planet, describe what you see.

This is actually similar to a planet I used in one of my earlier attempts to write a novel. That one was the last attempt before my current one. I was really invested in it for a few years, but put it on the back burner when I got stuck. I love sci-fi, so I'm hoping I'll one day get back to it if my current project ever gets done.