An away team is a team of specialized starship or starbase crew members assembled to perform missions on planet surfaces and other starships. These Away missions range from exploration or first contact to combat. The majority of these missions are launched using a ship's transporter to send the crew to their destination. When use of the transporter is impossible, shuttlecraft are used.
This term came to be used commonly in the 24th century, previous starship personnel would refer to this as a landing party.
Starfleet regulations prohibit the captain from joining away missions.
- This term entered common use at the beginning of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
See Also:
- Engineering team
- Survey team
- Observer team