Awww yeah here we go! Got a lineup of the main characters for my space au Project Artemis. In short, the gang has to go to space in a ship called the Artemis in search of the chaos emeralds. In their travels they meet an alien race called starlings of which Blaze and Silver are apart of. From there the adventure becomes much larger than anyone could ever for see.
More worldbuilding for those interested under the cut! Also, and this goes for an au I'm involved in, if you wanna know more feel free to send in an ask!!
The emeralds act like power generators able to power entire regions and are used as such. Several were under Eggman's control before all of them got pulled to space.
Sonic is more of a local hero and originally sets out to just find the emerald that powers his little region of the world.
Tails repurposes the Artemis from an old Eggman ship that was lying in the junkyard.
The incident on the ARK still happened in this au but Shadow did not go into stasis afterwards. Instead he wandered the Earth in search of answers for what he was and what happened as his memories did get kind of scrambled when he crash landed. When he catches wind that Sonic and co are going to space he figures that's his one chance to find out about his origin.
On the ship Sonic takes care of most of the outdoor maintenance with Shadow's occasional help. Tails pilots the ship and Shadow aids in navigation while Amy is the communications expert and keeps in touch with how Earth is doing through a line with Knuckles since he's got power via the Master Emerald.
Eggman runs several space mining operations on various asteroid belts and planetary moons. One of these moons happens to be the home of the starlings.
Starlings produce a faint energy signature similar to the Chaos Emeralds so Tails ends up tracking Blaze and Silver for a bit unintentionally.
Silver ends up helping Sonic after an accident while he was out on a space walk. Sonic tries to tell everyone about the alien he saw but Tails and Shadow are skeptical. Shadow actually lashes out thinking Sonic is toying with him and it takes Amy to convince him to give Sonic another chance.
Once the gang fully meets Blaze and Silver the six of them decide to search for the emeralds together and to get Eggman off of the starlings' home moon.
The emeralds themselves also contain a hidden power that only starlings can unlock. Unlocked emeralds then have some kind of elemental ability tied to them.
Eggman discovers this and figures out that if he is able to get a starling to active the emeralds he could have terraforming powers beyond his wildest dreams.
As such it becomes a race to find the emeralds before Eggman does and to keep the starlings safe.
I don't normally cover the Moon and Earth, probably not enough as they are among the most beautiful sights in the Universe (to a Human of course).
This image featured on APOD is a real breathtaking view, from an outstretched arm, the spacecraft takes an image of the Ocean of Storms.
NASA's Orion spacecraft is designed to take humans back to the moon as part of the Artemis missions. Imagine if you were given the opportunity to look out the window and see the moon like that ! Thankfully, we don't all have to do the excessive training to be an astronaut, it's not going to overwhelm us quite like those who really see it, but the images returned give us a glimpse of the very very near backyard
