who were the founding members of the united federation of planets
United Federation of Planets In altcanon sources like the original 1975 Star Trek Star Fleet Technical Manual and Johnson's Worlds of the Federation, as well as the Next Generation Last Unicorn and original Fasa roleplaying games, the Federation's five founding members were Earth (or Terra), Vulcan, Tellar, Andor, and Alpha Centauri (known also as Al Rijil, or by the Terran astronomical abbreviation ACen). Fandom and various altcanon works assert that founding member Alpha Centauri is home to a human race (transplanted by the Preservers from classical third-century BC Greece) known as, variously, the Centaurans, the Centaurians, or the Centauri, a perspective supported by the description of Zefram Cochrane, in the classic episode "Metamorphosis", as 'Zefram Cochrane of Alpha Centauri'. Altcanon explanations hold that Cochrane was either a Centauri himself or, more likely, a resident (the novel Federation, for instance, sets his home on Alpha Centauri B II, the second planet orbiting the trinary's secondary star) of a Terran colony in the ACen system. The films have since cemented this in canonical truth, with Cochrane born on Earth but retiring to his final years on Alpha Centauri before his disappearance and presumed death.