Losing Mars

by Peter Cawdron

  Hedy and I both drift forward as the engine cuts out. Our helmets nod in unison.

  “And we have main engine shutdown.”

  As quick as that, we’re in space.

  “Staging.”

  The launch stage falls away, doomed to tumble back to Mars as an artificial meteorite. Our remaining orbital engine is tiny, with a nozzle no bigger than a trash can and a bunch of disposable fuel tanks clustered around it like basketballs. It continues to push us on for another minute or so as the empty tank falls back toward the planet.

  “We are in a stable orbit at 470 kilometers, moving at 3.3 km/sec with a period of just under two hours.” Mentally, I do the math. That’s roughly 7,500 miles an hour from a standing start. Eat your heart out, Ferrari.

  Already, dawn is approaching, which means we’re moving out of radio contact with Shepard. From their perspective, we’re dipping below the horizon.

  Within a minute, the thin red crescent stretching around the planet brightens as the sun comes into view. Shadows stretch across the land. Craters pockmark the surface. Sand dunes. Ravines. Canyons. Dried up riverbeds. Ancient deltas. The variety of geological features is breathtaking to behold. Collapsed lava tubes wind their way over the surface with almost sentient purpose. It’s no wonder the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli thought there were martians building canals up here.

  Mars is stunning from low orbit. We’re grazing the planet, so close the Redstone feels utterly small and insignificant, a tiny spacecraft rushing around a vast rusty sphere, caught by its gravity. The immense age of Mars is apparent from the various overlapping craters. In some spots, the circular imprint of meteor impacts has almost worn away, leaving faint curved outlines. Often, crater walls have collapsed on at least one side.

  Just like the Moon, Mars is a testimony to the bombardment of millions of planetary fragments left over from the formation of the solar system. Back at Shepard, we’d occasionally measure a Mars quake with ground sensors and scramble to pinpoint the direction. We’d cross-reference the general location using satellite imagery to find a new crater. Black scorch marks are a giveaway. As the atmosphere is thin, most meteorites punch through without burning up. They thump the planet like bombs exploding. Big ones, like those that formed the crater we launched from, would have struck with the force of a nuclear weapon.

  As we move more into daylight, the ruddy coloration gives way to a dusty brown. Dark stretches mark how various minerals have conglomerated under the prevailing winds. Some sections look bare, arid and desolate—flat stretches of regolith with scratches and hundreds of tiny craters. Further along in our orbit, we come across rolling sand dunes forming majestic patterns easily visible from space. Some areas look like the scales of a snake, while others have repeating waves, rippling across the surface of the planet.

  A dust storm hides the lower latitudes in a blurry haze.

  “Never gets old, does it?”

  Hedy’s not looking. She’s reviewing our orbital path on the computer, but she manages a “Nope.”

  The nature of orbital mechanics is a lot like those of a spinning top. Touch one side and the top gyrates away, spinning wildly, increasing its wobble on the opposite side. In the same manner, when we fire our orbital engine at one point, we’ll increase our distance from Mars on the far side, exactly opposite the point we undertook our maneuver. Whether it’s a plane banking after leaving an airport, a cyclist riding up the bend of a velodrome, or a skater taking a steep curve in a roller derby, the mechanics are the same. Accelerate here to reach a particular spot over there. Since our initial orbit is just under two hours in length, we’ll look at burns every hour to position ourselves at the same altitude as the Schiaparelli, overshooting slightly before dropping down onto its orbital path.

  Hedy’s reviewing the computerized flight plan. Me? I’m watching a scrap of paper drift past in weightlessness.

  “Coming up on our first altitude change.”

  We’re out of comms with Shepard so Hedy’s speaking for those listening back in Houston. Altitude changes are a bit of a seesaw, requiring two burns. Our first will take us up to 2,000 kilometers over there, on the other side of the planet, but that’ll leave us in a highly elliptical orbit, dropping back to 470 kilometers here, so once we’re over there, we’ll fire again to stabilize at 2,000 kilometers back here. Seems counterintuitive, but it’s Hula Hoops 101. We’re climbing out of a gravity well. It’s kinda like using a single plank of wood to escape a deep dark hole. Lean it on an angle to get from one ledge to another, then straighten it or you’ll slide back down where you started from.

  “Two minutes.”

  Hedy’s rather formal, which is out of character. Lisa would be this precise, but not Hedy, especially given our conversation prior to launch. Something’s bothering her.

  We watch as the counter descends to zero and the engines fire, pushing us gently, slowly increasing, giving us the illusion of weight for a few minutes. The engines cut out, and we’re coasting again, although now we’re heading out further into space.

  Mars recedes beneath us. The curvature of the planet becomes more pronounced. Fine features on the surface shrink from sight. We’re passing back into the shadow of the Mars, going back into the night that still pervades Shepard base. Sunlight clips the top of Olympus Mons, although the base of the massive volcano is already shrouded in darkness, the slopes are still catching the last rays of the martian day.

  Back at Shepard, they’re still several hours away from dawn, but I doubt anyone’s gone to sleep. They’ll be sitting beside the radio waiting for AOS—acquisition of signal. Although they know our launch unfolded according to plan, I’m sure Lisa is fussing with calculations, eager to confirm we’re following the flight path. I’m expecting Hedy to start putting out the call to Shepard but she’s staring at the console.

  “Are you okay?”

  She turns to me, looking pale. Oh, I’ve seen this before. Green gills.

  “Hey.” I hand her a barf bag.

  For me, returning to orbit has been like climbing on a rollercoaster—one helluva ride. In reality, spaceflight brings with it significant physiological changes. Whereas on both Earth and Mars, gravity holds our internal organs low within the body, in space, they tend to slosh around. Space sickness is a combination of the inner ear losing its orientation and the discomfort of the stomach quite literally rising within the abdomen. It’s more than a little disconcerting. Lymph fluids that normally drain under the stress of both gravity and muscular exertion are suddenly in flux, unsure where they should pool, adding to a general sense of bleh.

  Hedy vomits. The sound and smell has me on the edge of hurling.

  “Redstone, Shepard. We are tracking you at 1,200 kilometers and rising. You’re looking good, Redstone.”

  Lisa’s chirpy. In contrast, Hedy’s vomiting. She begins dry reaching, doing what looks like stomach crunches in her couch. I gesture to the first aid kit beneath the command console as it contains anti-emetics. Hedy waves me away, pointing at the screen, wanting me to respond.

  “Ah, copy that Shepard. Smooth flight. All systems are GO.”

  Hedy has her head buried in the bag. She winds her hand through the air, signaling I should keep talking. I’m not sure what I can tell them that our flight telemetry won’t already indicate.

  “We got a great view on our first orbit. Low dust to the south. Clear shot of the Arcadia plains and Elysium Mons in the north.”

  Lisa’s reply cuts through to the heart of the matter. “Hedy’s throwing up, isn’t she?” Lisa never was one for subtlety.

  “Ah, she’s adjusting… She’s fine. Really.”

  Lisa laughs. I hand Hedy a damp cloth as she closes the bag. She wipes her mouth, saying a croaky, “Thanks.”

  As we move closer to Shepard nestled in on the edge of the Eos Chaos, the signal strength grows so I switch from audio to video. Jen, Scott, Lisa and Susan crowd around the camera.

  “Hey, how you guys doing down t
here?”

  Jen’s voice breaks up as she talks. I’m not sure if that’s the transmission or nerves on her part. “We’re good. A little tired, but it’s good to see you guys up there.”

  “Mars never disappoints.”

  There’s not a lot to talk about. There won’t be any more TAV from Houston until Shepard moves back into sunlight. For all our advances, there’s still no way to transmit radio signals through a planet. There are a couple of relay satellites, but nothing intended to reach the base until closer to dawn. If anything, Houston will probably send us comms directly, although they’ll have to time their transmission for those portions of our orbit that are in sunlight. As everything they get from us is half an hour old, any operational comments they might have are grossly out of sync once they’ve traversed another half an hour through space to reach us. Right about now, NASA will be content to watch. They’ll have updates on the Huŏxīng Wu and might have additional recommendations regarding minor course corrections, but it’s a waiting game for all of us at the moment.

  “Hi, guys.” Hedy waves, forcing a smile, keeping the bag low, out of sight.

  Scott says, “Try to get some sleep up there. It’s going to be a long day.”

  We both nod, but sleep is wishful thinking. Even with the electronic blinds closed on the windows, there are always a few cabin lights active. Then there’s the periodic preprogrammed burns and the adrenalin pulsating through our veins. When Armstrong and Aldrin first landed on the Moon, they were given a rest cycle of six hours. I don’t know how they did it. I would have lay there awake, staring out the window at another world. Maybe they did too for a while, but as they’d been on the move for 21 hours straight at that point, I’m guessing they succumbed pretty quickly. I’ll get some shut eye. I doubt I’ll sleep. I can’t just switch off.

  “Will do.”

  Lisa says, “I’m sending up revised calculations,” with the kind of concern my mom would have when handing me a jacket on a cool evening, telling me the obvious—stay warm. Like, what? I wasn’t planning on freezing to death in a parking lot. I appreciate Lisa’s concern, but the reality is we’ll catch the Schiaparelli on our next orbit and once we gain visual, everything will be based on actual realtime measurements made by radar.

  Hedy says, “Okay, we’ve got another burn coming up in a couple of minutes.”

  “Copy that, we’ll track progress from here.”

  The video feed remains active, but no one talks, at least, not to us directly. Jen and Susan are chatting to one side. Lisa’s looking at something with Scott while Hedy and I are waiting for the next shove in the back. There’s something comforting about being connected, though. The distance between us seems somehow smaller. I appreciate how the team back there are making sure we don’t feel as though we’ve been cut loose and abandoned.

  We undergo our second burn, circularizing our orbit at just over 2,000 kilometers in preparation for our rendezvous with the Schiaparelli. The fuel tank on the orbital stage is now almost exhausted but it can be refilled once docked with the Schiaparelli. The Redstone is a capsule not unlike those used by Apollo astronauts, albeit with significant upgrades, and has the ability to maneuver and make modest altitude changes, but without the Schiaparelli, it’s just a tin can floating adrift in space.

  There’s not a lot to do now beyond coasting. Since we’re in a slightly higher orbit, rather than catching the Schiaparelli, it’ll catch up to us. Like NASCAR drivers screaming around a banked race track, lower is faster, so it’ll pass beneath us.

  “Ninety minutes. Time to get some shut eye.” Hedy’s right. There’s no sense in fighting fatigue. It’ll only make docking more stressful. She dims the lights and activates the electronic shades. A layer of liquid crystal within the laminated glass darkens the windows, blocking the light. I focus on relaxing my shoulders, followed by my arms, watching idly as Jen and Sue occasionally walk past the webcam within Shepard. I have serious doubts I’ll nod off. I’m expecting to be bored out of my tree when suddenly I’m asleep.

  I wake to bright lights within the cabin. What seems like seconds to me has been roughly an hour and a half.

  “Sleep well?”

  “Yeah.” I go to move, but my harness holds me in place. After loosening the straps, I sit up. “Where are we?”

  “We’re keeping station with the Schiaparelli at roughly five hundred meters.”

  I can’t see anything other than the red planet slowly drifting by outside my window, but on the screen there’s an enhanced view of the Schiaparelli. Various metrics overlay the image, along with crosshairs.

  “You want some time to wake properly?”

  “No, I’m good.”

  Hedy reviews an electronic checklist on a computer tablet. “I’ve got remote control. Electrical power is good. Fuel is good. Warming the tanks. Umbilical is powered and ready to engage.”

  “She’s been up here for a while.”

  “She has. She’s in good shape, though.”

  I could really do with a coffee, but I reach into a nearby compartment and pull out some orange juice. After biting off the edge of the plastic and sticking in a straw, I suck on the juice, quickly draining the package. The burst of flavor brings me to life.

  “Closing to a hundred meters.”

  The Schiaparelli is visible out of my window. Sunlight reflects off its metallic surface. Four arrays full of solar panels stretch out on either side of the craft like the wings of a dragonfly. Our docking point is a large flat section at the front of the vessel where we’ll nestle into a cradle, with an umbilical attached on the side. The Schiaparelli will become our interplanetary stage, boosting us back to Earth and providing power and supplies through couplings on the side of our vessel. Since the underside of the Redstone is a heat shield, ports will automatically attach, clamping down on our craft around the rim, an approach first used by the Apollo Service Module. It’s a proven design, and when it comes to space, that’s what’s important. Fast, fancy, slick and complex is nothing compared to reliable because there’s no chance of repair or refit when you’re a hundred million miles from Earth.

  Like the Redstone, the Schiaparelli service module looks sedate even though it’s racing around Mars at 2.8 km/sec.

  The mind is a curious thing. I use metrics for measurements because that’s the norm for space travel, but to appreciate these values properly I find myself converting to US standards. 2.8 kilometers a second. Call it three for simplicity’s sake. Sixty seconds in a minute. Sixty minutes in an hour. That’s roughly 10,000 kilometers per hour, which is a nice easy figure to reverse engineer into MPH, bringing me to roughly 6,000 miles per hour. The irony is, we’re traveling slower the further we move from Mars. Strange, but true. Higher orbits move slower but take energy to reach. For all practical purposes, though, regardless of our insane speed relative to Mars, compared to each other we’re closing at just a few meters per second. We’re like two cars casually passing each other on the freeway.

  Hedy punches in a preset command as I say, “Docking sequence activated.” I didn’t have to say that, but I feel somewhat redundant watching Hedy start the routine. From here, we’re both sidelined. Computers will manage the approach. All we have to do is sit back and relax. Technically, Hedy could take over at any point but would only do that in an emergency. Me? I’m supposed to be the pilot, but really I’m a passenger.

  Slowly, the Schiaparelli grows larger until we can read the writing on the hull, see the pipes and wiring wrapped around the various parts of the module, and make out the US flag mounted below the docking platform. We drift past, losing sight of the service module itself, seeing nothing but the planet below. The computer guidance system is designed to move slowly. We may be weightless, but we still have inertia so the computer gently brings us to a halt relative to the Schiaparelli, positioning us in front of it. Camera shots show a separation of about ten meters, or roughly thirty feet. At each major point within the procedure, control is returned to Hedy so she can
confirm she’s comfortable to proceed.

  “Looking good.”

  I nod in response.

  Hedy punches a nice, big, unambiguous green button marked PROCEED, keeping her gloved fingers well clear of the red ABORT. I forget the exact process, but I’m pretty sure ABORT has us shooting forward to get well clear of the Schiaparelli in the event something’s amiss. If the Schiaparelli was tumbling or twisting, an abort might be necessary, but so far everything’s textbook.

  The beauty of the system is our onboard computer is controlling both spacecraft in a delicate celestial ballet. Each step is detailed in writing on the screen to give us a level of confidence in what’s happening.

  RCS: 0.25 m/s relative velocity.

  RCS—Reaction Control System is a fancy name for thrusters. Half a meter per second is about the length of my forearm. We’re moving no faster than a punt on the canals at Oxford University. I undertook an exchange there for three months during my last year at college. The Brits sure know how to do leisurely, especially during a long hot summer.

  RCS: 0.10 m/s relative velocity.

  Okay, we’ve slowed and are now moving about the length of my hand every second.

  RCS at 0.05 m/s relative velocity.

  Damn, this is a smooth ride. We’re currently drifting at roughly the length of my little finger each second and there’s still a visible gap between the two craft. Slowly, our capsule aligns with the Schiaparelli.

  Contact Light.

  Roughly a second later, we hear the sound of clamps grabbing the hull and locks turning, gripping the edge of our spacecraft and hooking up the umbilical.