100TWC - Day 32: Exploration

"Three minutes to ion ignition."

Yevgeny Orlov stared through the observation window beside him. At this distance Mars was still a small red blob, but the ion engines required a much longer burn than the old chemical rockets. He checked his velocity and attitude readouts again to confirm the captain's burn countdown.

Still many thousands of kilometres distant, there was no visible sign of Curiosity. The old Mars rover that had paved the way for the first manned exploration had long since stopped broadcasting, although WSA technologists, some of whom were old enough to have worked on the Curiosity project, still kept alive a flicker of hope that the craft would have some small reserves of energy remaining. It was programmed to continue monitoring operations even if transmission was interrupted, cycling its buffers until contact was reestablished. Remotely, or manually.

The thought of manually retrieving Curiosity's records -- making actual physical contact with the rover after all these years -- sent a thrill down Yevgeny's spine. A thrill that was interrupted by Captain Hu's announcement.

"Ion burn initiated. Commence orbital insertion procedures."

*

The dull red arc of Mars filled Yevgeny's observation window as the Red Rider completed orbital insertion. The operations cabin was filled with muted voices calling out readings and the click and beep of switches being thrown and computers responding, signalling, or calling for attention. At this stage of the journey, Yevgeny had little to do except support the others. As the mission's planetary scientist his work wouldn't really start until they achieved planetfall.

Just about every other station on the Rider was occupied by crew members whose fierce concentration on this critical phase was almost tangible. Richards, the astrogator, monitored her course by the second. Doctor Singh kept tabs on all the physiological telemetry readouts for the crew. Several of his outputs glowed amber, indicating high stress levels which were only to be expected, but thankfully none of them had yet strayed into the red. The only red in the cabin of the Rider was the glow from beyond the windows. Mars rotated slowly beneath them, beautiful and -- despite the masses of information transmitted by Curiosity over the previous twenty-seven years -- mysterious.

A low bell-like chime sounded, indicating successful orbit had been achieved. The crew cheered, high-fived and exchanged relieved smiles. Time for a brief but well-earned rest before moving on to the next phase of the mission: preparing their lander for launch. Once again Yevgeny thrilled at the thought that the culmination of his life's ambitions -- actually setting foot on an alien world, seeing first-hand the strange and unique landscape, and investigating the seismology, geomorphology and mineralogy without any interstitial robots or radio links -- was now only hours away.

[ this is a companion piece to "Seeing Red" which appears next in the writing challenge - on Day 33 ]