The Capellan Pass is the primary interstellar trade route between the Frontier Sector and the Rim and the only interstellar trade route between both regions open to the public. The published route links Volturnus, in the Zebulon System, and Faire, in the Capella System, but navigational data is also available for Anker, Ifshna, and Homeworld.
The route is unusual in that it passes through a dust cloud (the Eornic Cloud region of the Xagyg Dust Cloud), requiring ships to exit the Void, make a radical course correction, and re-enter the Void a second time; this can be quite taxing on the engines, since the vectoring required takes almost an entire day of 1g thrust, with little room for error. Experienced spacers call this maneuver “making the bend”.
There is some misconception regarding the relationship between the Capellan Pass and the Zebulon Corridor; the latter refers exclusively to the Truane's Star-Zebulon route, while the former is both the Zebulon-Capella route proper and the commercial name given by shipping companies to the Pale (Truane's Star) - Faire (Capella) route.
Capellan Pass Station/UPFB Fort Aletsch[]
Soon after the route was opened to general commercial traffic, a deep-space unmanned communications relay station was constructed in the Bend to facilitate navigation and conduct research. Soon after, it was taken over by pirates who were hoping for a base from which to have some easy pickings. Reality, however, was too harsh.
Ships making the bend do not reduce velocity; they exit the void, establish their bearings, and re-orient the ship for vectoring thrust, changing their vector without reducing their velocity. Since these ships can appear anywhere within “tracks” several light-days in length, no pirate ship was ever able to successfully waylay a ship "making the bend".
In time, the UPF removed the pirates and manned the station, building a second ring for long-term habitation and deep-space research, and later a third ring for defense against Sathar invaders or pirate raiders. The station’s official name is “Capellan Pass Station”, but as a UPF outpost it bears the name “Fort Aletsch”, after Melissa Aletsch, the human astrogator who first charted the route.