Luna class

=Class Description=

The Luna-Class Development Project was initiated in 2369 in response to the discovery of the Bajoran Wormhole, and originally conceived as leading a planned Starfleet wave of deep-space exploration in the Gamma Quadrant. The Luna project took lessons learned from the Nova, Alliance, and Kelvin class ships, and expanded upon those to create a deep space exploration vessel that could conduct effective exploration missions, with the ability to look after itself in unknown space. The project was spearheaded by Dr. (Commander) Xin Ra-Havreii, a Starfleet theoretical engineer at Utopia Planitia. Field testing on the Prototype U.S.S. Luna was under way by 2372 in the Alpha Quadrant, and construction of the class was scheduled to begin the following year. Unfortunately, contact with the Dominion and the subsequent outbreak of hostilities mothballed the project indefinitely, as Starfleet redirected its shipbuilding resources to the production of vessels better suited to combat. Only the USS Luna had been build. She was assigned to Starbase 400 near the Federation borders with the Klingon and Romulan Empires.

Upon the war's end in late 2375, Dr. Ra-Havreii correctly judged that the Federation's cultural psychology would eventually shift back toward its pre-war ideals, and pushed to have the Luna-class revisited as a major step toward resuming Starfleet's mission of peaceful exploration (even though the class would no longer be assigned exclusively to the exploration of the Gamma Quadrant). Construction of an initial group of twelve Luna-class vessels was completed by 2379, and the Titan was offered to William T. Riker, one of many command officers eager to put the strife of the last decade behind him.