by Brian Kayser
Tucker gestures a few commands into the computer system.
Tucker: “Integrity check complete, all indicators are green. Powering up latch release mechanisms… now.”
A buzzing sound of electric motors can be heard as the capture latches are released, followed by a loud clunk and a dinging sound from the computer indicating a successful release.
Tucker: “Eagle-2, this is White-Bull-2, we have successful release of the capture latches. We have an angle of 55.7 and an inertial pitch gimbal angle at 30 degrees. We’re in attitude hold until you’re ready for final release.”
Hicks: “Copy White-Bull-2. Let’s go in one minute. The thrusting monitor program is up and running.”
Tucker: “Copy that Eagle. You can go anytime you want to.”
Hicks: “Engaging push-off solenoids in 5… 4… 3… 2… 1… and now.”
Both ships jerk a little as four 3-meter long rods quickly extend out of the CM, pushing the LM away from the command module. The CM crew watches the separation on a display screen, as the LM slowly moves away.
Tucker: “Eagle-2, this is White-Bull-2. Separation clean and complete, you’re on your own. We’ve got you in clear sight now, give us a spin around and we’ll do a visual.”
Hicks: “Copy that, proceeding with spin.”
A maneuvering thruster is given a short burst to slightly spin the LM around, so the CM crew can visually inspect it for any potential damage during their long trip.
Tucker: “Eagle-2, this is White-Bull-2. Visual inspection looks good and spectral surface scans are clean. You’re clear for landing maneuvers.”
Hicks fires the maneuvering thrusters again, first stopping the ship from its slow spin, and then again to start their approach to the landing location. Tucker, in the Command Module, tracks their descent both visually and with the ship’s systems, to assist with navigating to the correct landing site. Turk is closely watching his computer display, to make sure they are staying on course. Hicks makes small adjustments as necessary, however the computer guidance system is doing most of the flying.
As they descend toward the landing site, the features of the ice moon are becoming more and more detailed. Doctor Evans is watching out the window just as she always does when landing in a commercial transport; however the terrain is much different during this descent. The surface looks like a huge mosaic in some places and plaster imprints of leaves in others. It is hard to look down at the surface without squinting, as the icy surface effortlessly reflects the sunlight that is blanketing the moon.
They are now gliding high above the Conamara Chaos region, which has a little darker surface and is easier to look upon. Their descent seems to be following a long ice canyon, known as the Agave Linea. Doctor Fedoseev is very excited as he is looking out a port window by his seat. He is excitedly shouting out the names of all the different Linea and other points of interest; his finely stranded hair whipping from side to side as he quickly turns his head to see all the sights.
Evans politely acknowledges Fedoseev, but keeps her own eyes fixed out her window. As they get lower, she can see the lines that looked like leaf imprints, are actually long rigid ice mountains poking up all around, and long canyons where it appears the icy crust had cracked, filled with water, and refroze millions of years ago. She can hear Fedoseev say that any minute now, they should be able to see Thera Macula, which is their designated landing site.
Thera Macula, was determined to have the thinnest ice crust where underneath, they hope to send their probe into the Great Schmidt Lake. This is a subsurface body of water, trapped in the icy surface of the moon, which has been the object of study for many decades. It contains more water than all the Great Lakes combined. It is in a dark chaos terrain with a very bumpy and irregular surface, making it a challenging landing site and equally challenging to navigate with surface rovers.
The chitter-chatter of Fedoseev and the pilots during the descent went mostly unheard by Evans as she was more interested in the sights out her window, however she snapped up when she heard Hicks announce; “Prepare for touchdown in sixty seconds!”
Now, the chitter-chatter of Hicks, Turk, and Glover has Evans full attention, as their voices are getting louder and more animated; making her wonder if something is wrong. She tightly grabs onto the arms of her chair; not that it will really do any good if they were to crash, but it makes her feel safer.
Glover pipes up, “Commander, here comes that plume that Gramps almost crashed his payload pod into. We’re going to come pretty close ourselves if we don’t pull up a bit!”
“Don’t worry, I’m watching it,” Hicks snaps back at Glover. “I can’t pull up too much or we’ll overshoot our landing spot.”
The Eagle-2 lander just barely clears the top of the huge glimmering ice mountain; Glover lets out a big exhale. They can now see the large valley where they will land. There is a small section that has a relatively smooth surface area where they will land. Up ahead, Evans can now see the sun shimmering off of the metallic skin of the payload pods, which were sent down ahead of them. She knows from mission briefings that they want to land as close to the pods as possible, to minimize the amount of walking required to reach them. They are now surrounded by the beautiful icy mountains on all sides as they descend into the valley.
“Okay now people… hold on, we’re coming in a little hot,” Hicks yells out. “Crap… Crap! We’re going to overshoot! We’re going to overshoot! Well Shit! Hold on! Hold on!”
Besides overshooting the designated landing spot, they are coming up fast on another huge ice mountain on the other side of the valley, as well as rougher terrain. Hicks swears a few more times, and then reduces thruster power. He then pushes his control stick down hard to speed their descent, so they don’t run up the side of the mountain. They hit the surface hard, depressing the landing legs shock-absorbers all the way down to their limit, with a loud metallic clank, and then immediately Eagle-2 bounces back up, as the shock-absorbers spring back up. Everyone suddenly realizes that they can feel gravity again. Evans gasps loudly and then grabs her arm-rests even tighter.
A few seconds later they hit the hard icy surface again and also lurch forward, tipping a bit, then they launch a few meters back up into the air. They are almost upon the base of the huge ice mountain, as the now askew Eagle-2 hits down again with just one landing leg, spinning it around before the other legs touch down, skidding on the ice, and finally staying grounded. They skid for a few seconds more… then nothing; they are down, just three meters from the base of the mountain.
After a few seconds of silence, Turk blurts out, “Whew, now that was fun! Let’s do it again!”
“Once is enough for me, THANK YOU VERY MUCH!” Evans quickly screams back, her white knuckled hands still grasping the arm rests.
“This is Commander Hicks at 291 hours, 51 minutes mission elapsed time,” Hicks says into the radio. “Eagle-2 has landed!” Turk and Glover can also be heard in the radio broadcast, whooping and cheering. Evans and Fedoseev just stare at each other, the looks on their faces seemingly saying that they are amazed they are still alive.
“Tucker here, acknowledge touchdown at 291-51. Congratulations Eagle-2, Great job!” Cheering can be heard from the command module also.
Hicks radios back to Tucker, “We overshot the landing a little, how far are we from the designated landing mark?”
Tucker replies, “You’re about half a click east from the designated landing mark, where pods 1 and 2 are. However you’re actually a little closer to pods 3 and 4, about 400 meters.”
“Acknowledged,” Hicks shoots back.
The landing wasn’t great and they missed their mark a little, but they are down safely and so far everything looks good.
Chapter 4: Extra Vehicular Activity
After a few hours of performing post landing tasks the first Extra Vehicular Activity (EVA) is ready to commence. Commander Hicks and Doctor Fedoseev are EVA Team 1 and will debark first. Hicks will make the first historic steps on th
e icy surface of Europa, then Fedoseev. Shortly after Turkovitch and Evans, who make up EVA Team 2, will debark from the ship. The two teams will make their way to the payload pods. Lt. Glover is the Europa Base control officer and will remain inside at all times.
“Okay Commander,” Lt. Glover pipes up, “post landing check list complete. All systems diagnostics show normal. The air lock chamber-test just finished and is ready for use. We are ready for EVA anytime you guys are.”
“Great news! Curse / Smurse I say. Let’s go do this!” Hicks responds.
“Oh great… you just jinxed us now Commander,” Turk spits out slyly. “You couldn’t have waited until we got home to say that?”
“What, why? Are you little superstitious or something?” Hicks fires back.
“Well, no, not really, I think the curse is just a big joke, but I guess I wouldn’t go around mocking it… so I guess maybe that does make me a little superstitious, I suppose.” Turk replies.
“Yeah, I agree,” Glover interjects, “Let’s just not talk about it.”
“Da, I vill agree. Let us no talk about it,” Fedoseev says with a Russian accent while twirling the end of his mustache.
“Jeez, you guys are a bunch of superstitious babies,” Evans pitches in.
“Oh… What! I thought you were the coward,” Turk retorts surprised by her response.
“Well… I may be scared of real life things, like crashing during landing, but not of hokey curse stories. That’s just a bunch of B.S.!” she responds.
“Okay… whatever! Let’s just quit talking about this… please,” Glover pleads as he nervously massages his fingers through his short black hair.
Everyone laughs, except Glover who seems to be a bit more superstitious than the rest.
Hicks belts out with his booming voice, “Okay, yes, enough of that. I’m sorry I said anything. Fedoseev… are you ready to go for a walk?”
“Da!!” he says with much excitement.
Hicks and Fedoseev suit-up in their bio-suits. Unlike pressurized suits of the past, that were like wearing balloons, the first layer of these suits are made from form fitting polymer, custom tailored to each crew member. This polymer layer maintains body pressure, simply from the tight fit and elasticity. The outer layers of the suit provide heat and thermal insulation, as well as protection from the massive amounts of radiation that Jupiter rains down on Europa.
They put on their protective helmets, which do maintain normal air pressure inside of them. The visors of these helmets are also transparent computer screens that they can interact with, to control their bio-suit computers. All input and control of the computer is done entirely by optical eye tracking sensors. All they have to do is move their eyes to control the pointer, to select various options such as: checking their oxygen level, turning on and off their communication (com) unit, accessing informational databases, or to simply play their favorite music.
Once they have their suits completely assembled and all connections fastened, they enter the air-lock chamber. Once the air pressure is equalized to the extremely thin atmosphere of the moon, Hicks unlatches the hatch and opens it. A telescopic ladder extends down from the hatch automatically, until it reaches the surface below.
Hicks starts his historic climb down the ladder, which is a little tricky in his tight fitting bio-suit and large boots. He doesn’t want to slip or fall as he knows there is a camera recording his every move. The surface of Europa is extremely bright as well, making it hard to look down, until his eyes can adjust to the intensity.
He starts an audio broadcast, “This is Hicks, starting descent down to the surface. Lt. Glover, what is the mission elapsed time?”
“Mission elapsed time is 293 hours and 24 minutes.” Glover responds on the com.
Hicks continues “What a beautiful sight… we are surrounded by nearby mountainous ridges and deep gorges. It looks like it does right after an ice storm. It is very bright out here and my eyes are still adjusting to it.”
Hicks is at the bottom rung of the ladder and he pauses for a second, in a panic, as he can’t remember exactly what his line was that he was going to say when he planted his foot on the surface. Then he thinks he remembers and steps down, planting a footprint in the icy snow-dust.
“That’s another small step for a man, but it’s an even larger leap for mankind,” Hicks mutters out. He still isn’t sure if that’s exactly what he was going to say… but close enough. GSO wanted it similar to what Neil Armstrong said, as this is the first landing on a moon other than Earths’. Europa and Earth’s moon are very similar in size and have roughly the same gravity, about 15% that of Earth. Once Hicks is all the way out, he enjoys a few bounding leaps as he explores the nearby surroundings.
Fedoseev follows soon thereafter and tears up as he takes his first few steps and feasts his eyes on the stunning alien terrain at ground level. He sees the magnificently large ice mountain they landed near. His father had climbed quite a few mountains in his day and he figured he’d love to climb this one; glimmering in the glow of the Sun and of Jupiter. There are huge icy plumes shooting out of the side of the mountain; some of the massive chunks of ice seemingly suspended in mid-air.
The two men pull out some monitoring equipment from the LM and place them around the ship, and then they start their walk to payload pods 1 and 2.
Inside Eagle-2, Turk and Evans have put on their bio-suits; all but the helmets. Turk asks Evans, who looks a little paler than normal, “So are you nervous about this also?”
“Oh yes…” she says very fast, “nervous, scared, excided, giddy, anxious; pretty much any adjective you can think of and I’m it!”
“Well in 5 minutes, we’ll be out there, and I think the only adjective that will probably fit will be awestruck. You’ll be fine,” Turk says with a big smile, putting his forehead against hers looking deeply into her eyes. “Ready?”
“Ready sir!” she says a bit sarcastically.
He kisses her forehead, smiles, taps her once on the nose and says, “Then let’s go! Get that helmet on.”
They get their helmets on and enter the pressure chamber which then depressurizes to match the almost nonexistent atmosphere of Europa. Turk unlatches the hatch and opens it, seeing the telescopic ladder reaching down to the surface below.
Turk carefully steps down to the surface, trying not to step on Hicks’ historic first footprint. He looks around briefly and is simply amazed by the beauty of the landscape. He remembers thinking Mars was amazing, and it was, in its own right, but admittedly not even close to what he is seeing right now. He sees Evans starting to descend out of the ship. “Jeez, it is very bright out here, isn’t it?” she exclaims as she is trying to force her eyes to stay open.
Turk helps her down and she unknowingly stomps all over Hicks’ footprints… oh well he thinks. They start their bounding walk in the low gravity to find their payload pods.
As Evans’ eyes adjust to the brightness of the outside world of Europa, she is finally able to look around. “Wow, yes, awestruck is a great word to describe this,” she beams as they start their walk, beholding the sights in all directions. “It looks like a wonderful winter wonderland!”
Turk takes her hand, as best as he can with the bio-suit gloves. He can see her smile through the helmet visor. This is kind of romantic in a strange way he thinks. How many men get to take a walk with their girlfriends on a moon orbiting Jupiter? NONE! He finds himself smiling, even bigger than Juliana. He just wishes they could talk privately, but the only way to communicate is through the com units in the bio-suit helmet, which is being monitored and recorded by GSO for posterity. They both know this and understand that they need to keep their discussions professional. They also have cameras in their helmets recording panoramic 3D video of everything they see, but as long as they don’t look at their hands no one should see them holding hands. They slowly walk on, enjoying the moment and periodically muttering various adjectives describing what they see.
Chapter 5: Dou
ghnuts and Tremors
“STAND BACK…” Turk shouts, holding his left arm straight out to make sure Juliana does not get hit by the payload pod door as he opens it, causing it to fall open to the ground creating a ramp. The first thing he sees is the All-Terrain Rover and he looks at Juliana and smiles. She rolls her eyes and shakes her head as she knows exactly what he is thinking about; doughnuts… and not the kind you eat.
All the cargo in the payload pod is thoroughly secured and it takes them over an hour to unfasten and remove it all. The first thing they need to do is set up their monitoring equipment, which takes another 30 minutes. Dr. Huang is directing their progress from White-Bull-2, to make sure they set up all of the monitoring equipment and experimentation kits correctly.
Turk is very happy when they finally finish, as he knows that now they can take the rover for a spin and do some exploring. Turk grabs Juliana’s hand again and leads her to the passenger side of the rover as if escorting his prom date to his car; he gives a slight bow and flips his hand towards the seat and says, “I’d open the door for you… if it had doors that is…”
“I’m sure you would have, thank you kind sir.” Then just as she is about to climb in she pauses and smiles, “wait a minute, how come you get to drive? What if I want to drive?”
Turk says with a look of surprise, “Yeah, right. This is my baby!” Then after thinking a second he says with a sarcastic tone, “I of course would let you drive, if I could, but unfortunately you’re not authorized or trained to operate this vehicle.”
“Yeah, sure you would Patrick,” giving him a wink. Then she carefully climbs into the passenger seat while Turk climbs into the driver’s seat.
“HANG-ON,” Turk exclaims, as he punches the rover’s accelerator to the floor, making the back-end slip a little bit; although not as much as he was hoping for, as it is geared pretty low.