[Captain Joy]

Originally Posted by RogerBW

That's a very good question. As written, Basic Planetary Analysis doesn't even say that it requires a roll - and the other two tasks in that section do say that they need it. I suspect that this may be intended to be a time-consuming task to be done to the data from System Mapping.

Originally Posted by SS5, p. 32

Each planetary analysis is a long task requiring eight man-hours of Astronomy work.

I'm assuming it's an Astronomy skill roll; and at the very least, time spent modifiers (from B346) would be appropriate. The question is, are the range and comm/sensor array type modifiers appropriate as well?

Originally Posted by RogerBW

Though one could also argue that flipping the array into spectrographic mode isn't necessary for determining the position of a planet, and say it's a separate analysis task, in which case one could make a case for rolls on EO (Sensors) and Astronomy.

I don't know. I think you'd want doppler shift information to nail down the planet's orbits, which means you're doing some spectroscopy during System Mapping.

Originally Posted by RogerBW

Odd that it's Astronomy rather than Geology, too.

Well, you determine a planet's size, mass, temperature, atmosphere, and tentatively assign it a world-type. Maybe they figured Astronomy was more general in nature than Geology and therefor more appropriate?