It's 'Epiphany', UNSC. I always thought it was with a 'i', like Ipiffany.
It's possibly a Forerunner world or another shield world where the Forerunner actually made it inside the shield this time. Some say it's the "core" of the Ark. Well, the Ark doesn't really serve a purpose. Other than that we know it's out of range of the Halos, it's where you can activate all the Halos. So, if you reach the Ark, how are you going to survive? You need shelter, and food. All we've seen is a habitat like Halo but nothing. No cities that we know of, nothing.
I don't think it's Onyx. The crust of Onyx was shattered, so you would only see a massive ball of Sentinels and metal bunched together. And if it's Onyx, the MC would probably be saved one way or another because he's within reach or find maybe another way into the shield world. But after what happened in Ghosts of Onyx, I think the ONI would want to keep a safe distance, let alone send troops to extract the MC from the surface.
I don't think the MC would die on impact. He should be well protected, inside the hull of the Dawn weighing several hundred/thousand tons or so of metal. And he's safe inside a cryo-casket. AND his suit is designed to protect against high velocity impacts. He'll make it. He survived jumping out of the Forerunner Ship and making a big crater (I heard some say it looked like he was riding on a door or some other piece of metal).
It depends where the MC is at. He might not starve, if there's some way to save himself or there's something on the planet. Those lights on the planet seems like a good sign. Maybe there'll be rations still aboard one of the Dawn's storage cabinet or something.
High Charity crashed at the Ark. And it was subsequently blown up by the MC. I don't think High Charity can fly anymore, but I'm sure the Flood can find some way to make it fly. After all, they were "hard at work" at trying to repair the Pillar of Autumn as 343GS said, and the Autumn is far from being spaceworthy. I always figured High Charity would slipstream to Earth.
Nobody really uses the search bar, only when you need to find a thread or post that was lost, maybe. Espeially not new people.
And almost nobody reads the stickied rules either.