SS Mariposa

The SS Mariposa (NAR-7678), was a Terran DY-500 class colony ship that was in service in the early 22nd century. The vessel took its name from the Spanish word meaning butterfly.

The Mariposa was of UN registry, and owned by OCC. She was loaded and launched from Earth's Baikonur Cosmodrome on November 27, 2123. Gross vehicle mass was 3,000 metric tons.

Command crew

 * Captain Walter Granger
 * First Officer Snodgrass
 * Chief Engineer Winrich Kolbe

Cargo manifest

 * 225 Yoshimitsu computers
 * 5 monitor beacon satellites
 * 700 cellular commlinks
 * 50 spinning wheels
 * Several animal livestock, including: cattle, chickens, ducks and pigs

Mission
At the time of launch, the Mariposa was transporting two groups of settlers on a colonization expedition to the Ficus sector, a destination that was not made entirely clear, at least according to Starfleet Research during the 24th century. The first group of settlers were Irish Neo-Transcendentalists, who set up a low-tech colony on the planet Bringloid V. The second group was a collection of technology savvy scientists, destined for the planet Mariposa, located half a light year away from Bringloid V.

Bringloid V was successfully colonized first, but when the Mariposa began its planetary descent to the planet Mariposa, the ship's hull was breached and only five of the original colonists survived. The survivors used cloning to build the society of the Mariposa colony. Both colonies were forgotten on Earth, as no missions were recorded in or near the Ficus Sector at the time. Over two centuries later, in 2365, Bringloid V sent out an SOS and both colonies were found. 

Background
As Mariposa was the name of both the ship and the final destination planet, it is not clear which was named after the other. The captain of the ship was stated to be one of the colonists to the planet Mariposa.

The SOS was used by the European Hegemony. It is possible that only the Irish colonists were affiliated with this alliance.

There is a discrepancy between dialog and the okudagram, an alternate legible version of which has appeared in Star Trek: The Next Generation - The Continuing Mission (page 85). Picard orders up a list of all "Earth deep-space launches from 2123 to 2190 with the destination in or near the Ficus sector" and sees no launches to Ficus. The okudagram, in contradiction, reads seven launches to Ficus sector from that time period. Even the Mariposa is listed as one of two colony ships. An additional discrepancy is that the dialog consistently describes a span of over three hundred years, putting the episode in the mid to late 25th century (2400s), rather than the canon-established 2365.

SS Mariposa SS Mariposa