The Sakharov near the USS Enterprise-D in orbit of Gagarin IV.
Side view of the Sakharov.
The shuttlecraft Sakharov was a type-7 shuttlecraft assigned to the USS Enterprise-D. It was shuttlecraft 01.
In 2365, Dr. Katherine Pulaski had Lieutenant Commander Data pilot the Sakharov to a position away from the Enterprise-D so she could transport aboard one of the affected children from the Darwin Genetic Research Station. There was concern that the children were carrying an unknown pathogen, and Pulaski wanted to examine one of them outside of styrolite stasis. The Sakharov served as a way to maintain a quarantine. While aboard the shuttle, Pulaski learned that the children were in fact the cause of the hyperaging observed on the station and the USS Lantree and became infected herself. Data later landed the Sakharov on Gagarin IV, but the shuttle was retrieved once a method to reverse the hyperaging was devised. (TNG: "Unnatural Selection")
Later that year, Wesley Crusher and Captain Jean-Luc Picard took the Sakharov on a trip to Starbase 515. (TNG: "Samaritan Snare")
- Wesley indicates that he is in shuttlecraft 02 during launch, but exterior shots of the shuttle confirm that he was actually in the Sakharov.
Q stole the Sakharov from the Enterprise in 2366. He had been turned human as punishment by the Q Continuum and was promptly attacked by several species he had once antagonized, including the Calamarain. The Enterprise was able to ward off the Calamarain, but was unable to assist the civilization on Bre'el IV with its shields raised. Q piloted the shuttlecraft and lured the Calamarain away from the Enterprise. This selfless act proved to Q (2) that Q had learned his lesson, and Q's powers were restored. The shuttle vanished, but was probably returned to the Enterprise shuttlebay. (TNG: "Deja Q")
In 2369, the Sakharov was used in to plant mines on the hulls of Cardassian warships hiding in the McAllister C-5 nebula. The mission was flown by Commanders Riker and La Forge. (TNG: "Chain of Command, Part II")
Several weeks later, the Sakharov was part of a holodeck simulation created to fool the sentient hologram James Moriarty. Moriarty believed he and the Countess Regina Bartholomew were onboard the real Enterprise and were given a real shuttlecraft to explore the cosmos together. In reality, their programs were confined to a small holographic data cube which simulated an entire universe for the two to explore. (TNG: "Ship in a Bottle")
- In its two final appearances, the interior of the Sakharov was represented by that of a type-6 shuttlecraft. In TNG: "Ship in a Bottle," the aft exterior of the Sakharov was actually seen as a type-6 shuttle, but this error could possibly be explained as a holodeck malfunction.
- This shuttle is named in tribute to the Nobel Prize winning physicist Andrei Sakharov.