ICS Elysium

A fair-sized, elegant and sleek vessel, with sweeping curves and unadorned design. The Elysium has a faintly pinched-oval silhouette from above or below, and from the side is slender, but not flat. The wings are a gradual delta shape, starting from the centre of the ship, while the tail is low and subtle.   It is highly agile, designed to dodge through asteroid belts with ease. As an exploration vessel, it does not carry significant military capacity, but it is not defenceless either. The Elysium's hull is triple-layered, though the outermost layer is not defensive in purpose - it is capable of flipping over in sections, allowing numerous highly-tuned sensors to be exposed, for analysing local conditions within atmospheres and space dust clouds. These sensors are normally kept stored to protect and maintain them when not in use.   It is the only ship within the Ilios system with an FTL drive, as the ability to make new ones was lost shortly before the initial transit to the Ilios system by human colonists. The ship itself has great historical and cultural significance, as it is the very same ship that brought humans to the Ilios system. Despite its age, it is still fully functional, and is carefully maintained by interplanetary efforts.   Although it was used to bring humanity to the Ilios system, the ship is significantly smaller than most space stations, and certainly smaller than most colony ships. It houses a relatively small populace, just large enough to avoid genetic problems from inbreeding. Back when it still served its primary function, it also housed hundreds of thousands of frozen embryos, which have since been used to populate the five planets of the Ilios system.