Outbound Flight Project

Outbound Flight was an expeditionary project that sent a mission of six Jedi Masters, twelve Jedi Knights and 50,000 men, women and children beyond the borders of the Galactic Republic into the Unknown Regions where they hoped to pierce the edge of the galaxy and seek out extragalactic life.

Birth of the project
The project was the brainchild of famed Jedi Master Jorus C'baoth, who desired to discover other Force-sensitive species. His efforts were blocked by the Republic bureaucracy, until C'baoth thwarted an assassination attempt and gained the Senate support he needed. The assassination attempt was secretly engineered by the shadowy Sith Lord Darth Sidious; though it failed (but this was probably Sidious' intent all along), Sidious saw an opportunity in the project to slay several powerful Jedi. He was fearful of what the project would uncover however--what his servant Kinman Doriana referred to as the Far-Outsiders, in actuality the Yuuzhan Vong

Supreme Chancellor Palpatine eventually approved Measure 4213.0410, allowing the project to go ahead.

The end for Outbound Flight
The explorers were housed in a mobile space station composed of a central fuselage surrounded by six Dreadnaught-class heavy cruisers designated D-One through D-Six; together, the massive ship was known as Outbound Flight. The expedition departed from Yaga Minor in 27 BBY.

During the expedition, Jorus C'boath took over the ship from Captain Pakmillu and was extemely stict and unfair to the non Force-sensitive people. He stole chidren in the night to train, and wouldn't allow decoration, and punished people severely for accidents. The crew started to despise him.

As Outbound Flight departed, Palpatine detached a Trade Federation task force of fifteen of its most modern warships to destroy the mission. Palpatine’s interception force accidentally encountered the Chiss Expansionary Defense Fleet. There, Kinman Doriana convinced its leader, the young Mitth'raw'nuruodo (later the Imperial Grand Admiral called Thrawn), to aid in the destruction of the project.

Mitth’raw’nuruodo knew that if Outbound Flight made it out of the Galaxy it would be intercepted and give away vital secrets to the Far-Outsiders and would therefore be a threat to the Chiss Ascendancy&mdash;and the galaxy. To stop this, he began placing Doriana's droid starfighters on his base at Crustai in preparation to stop the Flight. Meanwhile, Thrawn's "prisoner" Jorj Car'das formed a brilliant scheme by getting the Vagaari, a nomadic and deadly enemy of the Chiss, to attack them so Thrawn would be able to destroy their fleet. However, Outbound Flight had arrived a few minutes before the aliens. When negotiations failed between the Chiss and Outbound Flight, the Chiss attacked and killed all of the Jedi, but Jorus C'baoth and his former Padwan Lorana Jinzler. In a fit of rage, C'baoth fell to the dark side and force-choked the Chiss Commander. Kinman Doriana, panicking, diverted the starfighters from the Vagaari and sent them smashing into the ship, opening it to space. Special radiation bomb (which Thrawn had intended for use against the Vagaari) then detonated themselves inside each Drednaught of Outbound Flight.

Only Lorana and fifty seven colonists managed to escape. Lorana, along with Thrawn's brother, Thrass, sent the ship into lightspeed and crashed it into a planet later known as part of the star cluster The Redoubt. The fifty-seven survivors, separated from Lorana and Thrass, left their Dreadnought. Lorana and Thrass were killed due to Dreadnought placement and navigational difficulties, but their sacrifice allowed the other 57 survivors to survive on the unknown planet.

Had the Outbound Flight Project been successful, the inhabitants of the Galaxy could have had an early warning of a number of hostile species including the Yuuzhan Vong, the Ssi-Ruuk, the Tofs, the Nagai and the Killiks - and vice versa.

Rediscovery
In 22 ABY, Chiss explorers discovered the remains of Outbound Flight and its support ships fifty years after its destruction. On a remote planet within a star cluster known as The Redoubt, the survivors of the project had founded a meager, self-sufficient colony.

Jedi

 * Jorus C'baoth
 * Evrios
 * Lorana Jinzler
 * Justyn Ma'Ning

Non-Jedi

 * Algrann
 * Jobe Keely
 * Pakmillu
 * Dillian Pressor
 * Jorad Pressor
 * Katarin Pressor
 * Sivv
 * Brace Tarkosa
 * Chas Uliar

Behind the scenes

 * Dark Force Rising indicates the project departed five years before the Clone Wars, a conjecture made by Timothy Zahn before LucasFilm's development of the precise timeline of the Clone Wars.
 * The New Essential Guide to Characters also indicates the project departed 31 BBY, but this is superseded by the date given in the subsequent novels.

Appearances

 * Outbound Flight
 * Republic HoloNet News Special Inaugural Edition 16:5:24 in Star Wars Insider 84
 * Heir to the Empire
 * Dark Force Rising
 * The Last Command
 * Survivor's Quest
 * Agents of Chaos I: Hero's Trial
 * Dark Nest I: The Joiner King