Canon Facts Backstage Info  Speculation

The Enterprise carried a pod which had to be ejected during ion storms. In 2267 the ship ejected its pod apparently with engineer Ben Finney still within it, causing Captain Kirk to be court martialled. Kirk was cleared when it was revealed that in fact Finney had faked his own death to gain revenge on Kirk for reporting a mishap he had made some time previously. When the Enterprise visited the Halkan planet later in the same year, an ion storm disrupted the ships transporter system and caused several of its officers to be swapped with crew members of an Enterprise from an alternate universe.

In 2375 the Delta Flyer was badly damaged by an ion storm and crash landed on an M class planetoid. Voyager managed to weather a level 5 storm and rescue the Flyer, shortly before a level 8 storm arrived.

A neutronic wavefront is a phenomenon which is produced when two neutron stars collide. The collision forms a ring structure which expands outwards at a significant fraction of the speed of light, presenting a danger to spacecraft which encounter it.

In 2376 USS Voyager encountered a class nine neutronic wavefront which was expanding at 200,000 kilometres per second, approximately 66% of light speed. The phenomena extended for 3.6 light years, indicating that the collision had taken place several years previously. Voyager was unable to escape the wavefront at warp speeds as the neutron radiation it was emitting was disrupting plasma flow within the ships systems. Lacking sufficient impulse speed to escape the wavefront, Voyager generated an inverse warp field in order to lock itself within position, inoculated the crew against the expected radiation increase, and attempted to ride the storm out.

While the ship was able to weather the majority of the wavefront successfully, the neutronic gradient increased towards the trailing edge. The ship experienced energies of well over 90 million terajoules. The inverse warp field destabilized and Voyager was dragged along with the wavefront, inflicting significant damage on the ship. Fortunately Voyager was able to use its main deflector dish to cut a path through the front and escape.

Encountered by the Enterprise in 2267, Murasaki 312 is a quasar like phenomenon of great size and power. Following their standing orders, the Enterprise investigated the anomaly and discovered that it had a negative ionic concentration at 1.64x10⁹ metres and was emitting radiation at a wavelength of 370 Angstroms, with harmonics upward along the entire upper spectrum. The effect had ionized an entire sector, covering at least four solar systems in the vicinity of the ship. The effects of Murasaki badly compromised the performance of both communications and sensor systems across this region.

The Enterprise launched a shuttlecraft to investigate the phenomenon, but the craft was disabled and dragged into the centre of Murasaki 312 where it crash-landed on Tarsus II. The shuttles crew were able to repair it sufficiently to launch again and make a brief orbital flight. Fortunately the Enterprise was still in the area and was able to recover those crew members who had survived the planet.

Although Murasaki 312 began to dissipate somewhat as the Enterprise left, the anomaly continued to exist for at least the next century. In 2367 the Enterprise-D conducted some sensor scans of Murasaki 312 whilst passing by.