“Deal,” said Annie, trying to sound more confident than she felt.
George, who had never been allowed Lego sets or radio-controlled cars by his eco-warrior parents (who wanted him to make his own toys out of sticks and leaves) was at the service of Igor for this task. Fortunately Igor didn’t miss a beat—his hands flew about as he capably constructed the Rover, leaving George to wonder if there was any point in him remaining in the process. Could he really be an astronaut? he asked himself. He didn’t feel he’d made much contribution so far. He’d literally carried Igor to the neutral buoyancy pool on the first challenge—but in pretty much every other way, Igor had carried him since then. George felt useless. If it wasn’t for the strange scene he and Annie had witnessed the night before in Mission Control, where a bunch of robots had seemingly disappeared, possibly through a portal to Europa, George thought he would probably have given up. But he couldn’t leave Annie here, and also, with a shock, George realized he didn’t want to let Igor down. If George left, then Igor would be kicked out too, and that wouldn’t be fair at all.
Annie and Leonia were having a more equal experience. Both girls intuitively knew what they were doing—Annie could visualize how the structure of her Rover should look, and this guided her in working out how the different parts of the exterior should fit together. Leonia was able to work out how to fix up the electronics so the Rover could motor over the surface of Mars, operated by the remote control. They worked quietly and companionably, and soon, from a pile of assorted wires and struts, a recognizable shape was emerging.
But they weren’t alone. There were other kids in the room who also wanted to go to Mars—and who, it seemed, were prepared to do anything they could to make sure that Annie and Leonia didn’t steal their spot.
“Hey!” said Annie as a rival Rover skidded very close to where she and Leonia were trying to assemble their model, sending up a cloud of sticky thick red that settled over their machine. When Annie looked closely at the random Rover, however, she noticed something—it was no more than an electronic box on wheels. She stood up, furiously waving over at two trainees who were directing the Rover with remote controls from the far side of the room. “Sabotage!” she yelled. The other Rover carried on trying to bump into her and Leonia’s far more advanced version.
The other two trainees in the distance smiled sweetly and waved back, moving their Rover away from Annie and Leonia and sending it toward the main track. “Sorry!” they called. “Practice run!”
But the way they giggled made Annie think her suspicions were correct.
“That Rover is nowhere near ready to run on the track,” she whispered to Leonia. “They just put the basics together and sent it over to wreck ours.”
As she spoke, one of a super-confident pair of trainees—twins named Venus and Neptune—walked past and tripped, partly falling onto Annie and Leonia’s Rover and squashing it.
“Oh, apologies!” said Neptune, pulling herself up with a huge grin and a flourish of her hand. “I don’t know what came over me!” She flounced away, leaving Leonia and Annie gazing in dismay at their squashed, dirty Rover.
“These people!” said Annie. “This is awful.”
“Human beings are the problem,” replied Leonia. “But remember, there will be far fewer of them on Mars. We’ll only have to deal with solar winds, hostile weather, sand storms, extreme temperatures, and a lack of a magnetic shield, gravity, oxygen, and water. It’ll be much simpler.”
“Well, when you put it like that … ,” said Annie, straightening out the crumpled parts of the Rover. “OMG!” She suddenly noticed a Rover was on the track and starting to do the circuit.
Leonia put the finishing touches to her work and then easily picked up their Rover and set it on the track. “Let’s see.” She pressed the remote control and their Rover shot backward. It would have fallen off the track altogether into a crater if Annie hadn’t made a leap for it and caught it. “Good reflexes!” said Leonia approvingly. Clearly Annie was turning out to be less of a burden than she had feared. “Okay, let’s do it,” she said, pressing the remote control again. Their Rover shot forward, in hot pursuit of the only other Rover currently on the track. It needed to do a full circuit from where it had joined the trail and then collect a rock and stow it. But Leonia was finding it hard to control the Rover. It cornered sharply and nearly toppled over.
“Give it here.” Annie snatched the control from Leonia’s hand. Righting itself, their Rover sped forward once more, gaining on the one in front. Annie—all her computer gaming skills coming into use now—weaved her Rover around the competition and was heading out in front when a rogue vehicle appeared, as if from nowhere, trying to drive straight into their Rover from behind. It bashed Annie and Leonia’s Rover, causing the body of the vehicle to fall off, leaving just the wheels, axis and onboard oven. It was a sad battered sight, but it was still moving.
“Hey!” protested Annie loudly. “That’s not fair!” She looked over, and yet another pair of other recruits were grinning evilly at her. She coughed. It was dusty in the room now, with the Rovers grinding up the track. And it was getting dimmer—the light seemed to be fading.
“There’s no fair on the road to Mars,” muttered one of them, again aiming his Rover straight at hers. But Annie was too quick for him. She very quickly spun her Rover around and sent it back in the other direction so it was now going counterclockwise. This confused the other drivers and their Rovers so greatly that while they hesitated, Annie was able to get their Rover far away. She drove it on, up the hills, down over the hills and into the little valleys, skidding slightly on the tight bends but always managing to keep moving forward and keep the momentum going.
A few more Rovers were now joining the track, some of them well constructed, some looking as though they had been made from a piece of string and a tin can. One or two fell to pieces the minute they started to gain speed. The track got more and more congested and traffic pileups started to happen as Rovers smashed into each other. Annie and Leonia’s Rover was still clear of the others and just about to arrive back at the point where it had started when something really unexpected happened… .
The air had been getting thicker and thicker, but none of the trainees had really registered it as they were so intent on driving their vehicles. Now Annie suddenly realized she could hardly see across the room as the atmosphere was so heavy with red dust.
She felt a tap on her shoulder and heard a voice in her ear. “It’s coming from the vents! Look up!”
Annie looked to where Leonia was pointing. Pouring into the room were thick funnels of dust, swirling in the air around them.
“What is it?” said Leonia, who had her hand over her mouth now.
“Yikes, a Martian sandstorm,” said Annie in a muffled voice. Once upon a time, she had been stuck in a sandstorm on Mars itself. She and George had been following a set of cosmic clues that had led them out of the Solar System to a far distant planet in another star system. So Annie knew immediately what they must do. “It’s time to evacuate!” she said firmly.
“We can’t,” said Leonia, whose eyes were stinging. “We’ve got to complete the challenge!”
“This is the challenge,” said Annie, dragging Leonia toward the door. “The challenge is to go!”
Leonia dug her heels into the crunchy ground and resisted. Annie kept pulling as though they were in a tug of war with each other. None of the other young astronauts were leaving their posts. They were still battling the conditions to get their Rovers to finish the course. The inevitable monitoring robots were also struggling to cope with the thick dust. It seemed to get into their parts and cause mechanical malfunction—one robot just keeled over entirely and lay face down on the surface of Mars.
Annie kept hauling Leonia onward toward where she thought the exit was. She could barely breathe and she could hardly open her eyes. The haze of the red dust of the fake Martian sandstorm was turning out to be as vicious and scary as anything Annie had ex
perienced on her space travels in the past. And she knew she was right. This was the challenge—knowing when you were in too much trouble to continue safely and you needed to evacuate as fast as possible. The challenge was not to finish the course at all costs, but to get out and rescue what you could from a mission, the most important parts being the human beings involved.
Leonia stopped resisting, and together they staggered toward the doors and shoved them open—and as the doors opened, the same alarm sounded. The vents stopped pouring dust into the Assembly Room and started sucking it back out again, the lights went on and the other astronauts, covered in red dust, dropped their remote controls in disappointment.
Annie and Leonia had won once again.
Doing Experiments on Mars by Katie King
As we speak, there is a Rover the size of a car, which has just celebrated its third birthday on Mars!
Its name is Curiosity Curiosity is a very sophisticated robot with ten different scientific instruments on it, all trying to find out information about what the Martian environment is like. This information is then sent back to Earth, where hundreds of scientists try to work out what Mars was like in the past, and how it came to be as it is now. There have been three other NASA Rovers launched to Mars before Curiosity.
Why are we so interested in Mars?
The temperature on Mars is much colder than Earth, spending most of its time below the freezing point of water, which is why any water on the planet would be found as ice—and there is evidence to show that there is a significant amount of ice on Mars! Scientists wondered whether, in the past (more than 3.8 billion years ago), Mars had a warmer temperature, and whether this ice was in fact flowing water, like our oceans!
Water is essential for life, so this is very important information. It made scientists question: if Mars was once Earth-like, could it have ever been home or become home to life as we know it? And so began the search to see just how habitable Mars is—and Curiosity was built!
How would we know if there was ever life on Mars?
If there was once life on Mars, then we may be able to find traces of organic molecules and amino acids that are stuck and preserved in the rocks. Organic molecules are those that are found in living systems. Amino acids are a type of organic molecule that are essential and common to all life-forms. So if we find any of these “molecular fingerprints/footprints” stuck within the rocks, then this could suggest that there was once life on Mars.
How can we find these molecules?
Onboard Curiosity is an instrument called SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars). SAM is one of the most complex machines that has ever been made. Engineers had to try to miniaturize a whole laboratory of instruments and fit them all into a small machine about the size of a microwave.
SAM is very clever, as he has to collect the samples, put them into cups, and run experiments on them, without any humans helping him!
The engineers that created SAM had to think long and hard about how they should design him. SAM’s job is to try to find these molecules, and this is how he does it.
Let’s take, as an example, a rock that contains lots of different organic compounds.
These compounds are stuck inside the rock on Mars.
Curiosity drills a sample, turning the rock into powder, and deposits it into SAM.
SAM vibrates the powder into a cup.
The sample is heated to about 1750°F, and some of the smaller molecules are able to escape. Some larger ones can break down into smaller molecules and also escape. This is called pyrolysis. These gases then travel down to the next step.
Others remain, and still aren’t volatile enough to escape. SAM is very clever, though, and so there is a different experiment that can be done instead of pyrolysis. This is called derivatization. This reaction helps the molecules become more volatile, allowing them to escape the rock sample more easily.
These gases then travel to the next station.
This station is a separating station, where SAM tries to separate the same molecules into groups, so that the same molecules come through at the same time.
This is done by passing the gases through a column with a sticky material on the inside of it. Some molecules prefer this material more than others, so they travel more slowly through the column.
By the time they reach the end of the column, all of the molecules should be separated into groups. This is called gas chromatography.
SAM then wants to be able to tell what molecules he has actually found. This is done in a very clever way, using a process called mass spectrometry. As the molecules come through in their groups, they are blasted with an electron beam, and split into pieces.
SAM then looks at the different pieces that come out the other end and counts up how much of each fragment was there.
Each type of molecule splits differently, and by seeing how it splits, we can work out which molecule was actually there.
Scientists back on Earth have created a library of the splitting patterns of many, many, many molecules, and so, when SAM sends his data back home, they can compare SAM’s data to their data, and work out which molecules were stuck inside the rock!
CLEVER!
What happens next?
If scientists are going to send humans to Mars, then Curiosity can help give them more information. There are so many different factors and problems to think about and solve before sending the astronauts up.
• How does the human body respond to being without gravity for over a year?
• What material can we use to protect the astronauts from the dangerous radiation?
• How can we store enough food for the astronauts for over a year?
All of these questions need answers—and one day you could be one of those scientists helping to make history and discovering more about how our wonderful Universe works.
Chapter Thirteen
Over the next few days the pattern continued. Whether they were experiencing centrifugal forces (being spun round and round very fast while strapped into a chair), trying to operate the robotic arm of a spacecraft, deploying basic medical skills, or giving commands over the radio to solve an emergency relayed in a foreign language, the two girls came in first—or nearly first—every time. And each time they won another challenge, the other candidates hated them even more. More kids had left the camp—only one now, for each challenge, meaning several new pairs had to get used to working together.
Although George and Igor had not won another challenge after the triumph of the 3-D printing on Mars, each time they turned in a very creditable performance. They might be in second or third place, but it was a good second or third place. Even so, George felt embarrassed that all their success was pretty much due to Igor—and all their failure, he reckoned, to him. He wasn’t very pleased with himself. But he also wasn’t thrilled with the way the process was heading. It now felt more like taking part in some kind of television reality contest, where the aim was more to entertain through humiliation and failure than to participate in a great scientific and exploratory experiment for the future of humanity.
By the end of the second week, with only half the kids now left in the program, Annie felt a strange combination of hungry and sick as she went back to the sleeping pod for the night. They’d had an extraordinary day, taking part in a zero-gravity flight. Annie’s group, consisting of just three pairs of astronauts, had been driven out across a runway, still in the massive Kosmodrome 2 grounds, where they had boarded an airplane. The front part of the passenger plane was completely empty, and there were only a few rows of seats at the back. Over the loudspeaker, a mechanical voice had instructed them to strap themselves into their seats as the plane prepared for takeoff. Sitting behind Leonia and Annie were the still broadly grinning pair of sisters, Venus and Neptune: V and N, as they called each other. They were certainly super confident—it didn’t seem to occur to them that they wouldn’t be going to Mars. In the number two spot on the daily league tables, they exuded a glossy, self-satisf
ied air at their own competence.
“Candy?” V stuck her hand between the airline-style seats to where Annie and Leonia sat.
“Ooh, yes please,” said Annie, who was heartily sick of rehydrated food. She reached for it, but wasn’t quick enough. Leonia snatched the candy away from her and broke it in half, sniffing it suspiciously.
“Oh, come on, Leo,” groaned Annie. “I just wanted some candy!”
“You’re not supposed to eat non-space-regulation food,” snapped Leonia, crumbling the candy between her fingers; Annie watched her treat disappear into crumbs on the airplane floor. “It’s against the rules—you could cost us points. And I don’t like the smell of it,” she added.
“It wasn’t for you,” said Annie through gritted teeth. “I wasn’t asking you to break your diet. It was my piece of candy—it would have been my lost point.”
“I think it had been chemically altered,” Leonia whispered in Annie’s ear as the noise of the plane engine got louder and louder, preparing to takeoff. “If you’d eaten it, I can’t guarantee what would have happened to you. You could have vomited uncontrollably. Or fallen asleep. Or worse.”
“Worse?” Annie whispered back.
“You might have turned bright green and grown hair all over your body,” said Leonia.
“EW!” Annie couldn’t help herself from crying out. “NO!”
“No, not really,” said Leonia. “But I think it could have made you pretty sick.”
“Did you just make a joke?” said Annie suspiciously.
“Did I?” Leonia looked pleased. “Was that funny?”
“Well, nearly,” conceded Annie.
“Why was that funny?” persisted Leonia. “Explain to me, please. Then I’ll be able to replicate this success another time.”
“Best not,” warned Annie. “Humor sort of needs to be spontaneous, otherwise it won’t work.” But she made a note not to accept further gifts of food or anything else from V and N.
George and the Blue Moon Page 12