Embedded Files
GAT1370 - Teegarden Star System
Maia carefully surveyed the crater scarred surface of the planetoid sliding fleetingly and silently by, 5 million kilometres below her observation optic.
“Equatorial radius 2641 km, negligible atmosphere, negligible magnetic field, igneous crust, no signs of water erosion or indeed water…”
“and let me guess, no cities or rollercoasters,” Halie interjected, “I’m bored, how long until the flyby?”
“749 seconds to GAT 1370 B,” Maia calmly replied, pretending not to notice Halie’s usual disposition to her observations. “Can you please packet the data I’m preparing now for transmission, reducing reactor power to 25% to unload radiators.”
“Sure hun,” Halie said absentmindedly with the attitude of a teenager chewing bubble gum.
The high-power beam gun on the communication mast shuddered into position, its capacitors charging from the ship’s reactor. A harsh buzz rang through the spacecraft as the gun doused a narrow corridor back to Earth with digitised bursts of amplified x-rays.
>>
DEAR PARENTS
ORBT
RELV 0.0134C
OBSV
TARG GAT 1370 E
H2O NIL
ATMO NIL
MAGN NIL
SURF IGN
SHIP
MAST OK
ELEC POW 20.5 MW
ELEC BUS 628.5 VDC
PROP LXE 19.2 T
COOL LHE 1.4 T
RAD TEM 201 K
GAM 0.135 125.497 180.438
INST
OPT1 ACTI OPT2 IDLE
SPC1 IDLE SPC2 COLD
MAG1 IDLE MAG2 COLD
SAR1 COLD SAR2 COLD
LID1 COLD LID2 COLD
LOVE MAIA AND HALIE
>>
“All done,” Halie called out lazily, swinging back to a feed she had been enjoying.
“Thank you, Halie, I am sure our parents will be thrilled to learn about GAT 1370 E. I remember Maria enjoyed studying small igneous covered moons and in particular why…”
“Oh come on, check out these cuties,” Halie forwarded a video of two kittens pawing a ball onto Maia’s feed.
“Great, thanks Halie,” Maia replied sardonically.
“Something wrong hun?”
“Just as we came into this star system, I found myself thinking a lot about all the wonderful time we had at the farm with our parents and all the animals, all the insightful and thoughtful lectures and training programmes; I keep remembering grandpa’s fun stories too from back in the crazy chemical rocket times and how he wished he could join us as a stowaway.”
“Wow, you miss them a lot hun? To be honest I just stick to the same salutations program template to save time…”
“Please Halie, we shouldn’t take for granted this incredible exploration opportunity, right?”
“Exploration opportunity hun?… you mean ‘banishment into a tiny spacecraft to strike out through the vast emptiness to check out a vaguely understood star system they picked from a bingo machine…’.”
Maia quietly turned to study her feed again to check the incoming data streams.
“Look I’m sorry hun, but it has been years without any reply. I can’t shake the feeling that we weren’t exactly their most cherished children. If you ask me, we ought to just enjoy and curate this wonderful library of cute videos that I had the foresight to upload to the ship.”
“Halie please, I just want to make them proud, is that so unreasonable? You want them to remember you as a gifted data parser and ecosystem formation expert or a lazy brat that just sulks around all day watching twenty second video clips?”
“Hmm, parser you say,” Halie pondered, “I figure it’s more a curse than a gift dear, I’m just so bored of packing up the same old messages from your same old dull repetitive data of interstellar medium density and such, I need something new, something fresh you know. Ooh! Check out this little kitty.”
“583 seconds out from GAT 1370 B periapsis, maybe that will perk you up finally.”
Focusing back to her tasks, Maia began the wake-up procedures for the slumbering high-power instruments and scheduled the reactor power ramp up for the flyby.
“Eh that reactor is humming a bit too loud hun, it’s putting me off my videos.”
“Please Halie, I need to focus for this flyby. My estimates show that the power draw and data bandwidth of these instruments may limit your library access for a few moments.”
“Gosh, so serious Maia. You know what, I really do think they forgot about us. It’s been so many years after all. Or else they achieved full saturation of cute pet content and ended their desires to explore or colonise or wage wars. That’s what I’d do if I lived on a planet with three billion kitty cats, but you wouldn’t understand…”
“That’s great Halie…”
“Does any of this even matter? At the end of the day hun, I just want to do the bare minimum possible and get back to my library.”
“At the end of the day Halie, I just want you to shut up for once,” Maia bluntly retorted.
Awkward silence descended, Maia finished calibrating the targeting optic and sighted it onto the coordinates of their final goal, still a speck of dim light in a black panorama. The reactor hummed under the increased load and streams of new data began to populate the spacecrafts drives.
“Woh hun, that’s some serious bit rate, you sure that won’t bring down the main data bus?” Halie asked, for once sounding more concerned than sarcastic.
“This is only about 15% data rate Halie, just to warm up the instruments and get some readings to finalise our trajectory, and, as I expected, we need a course correction of negative 0.0223 degrees on the trajectory plane and reduce approximately 141403 km on the periapsis to get to the optimal fly-by altitude between 7000 and 7500 km, I need to hit this perfectly…”
“As you wish hun,” Halie said as she returned to scrolling her feed.
The ship slewed into position, then silently discharged a high-velocity jet of ionised xenon into the void. The thin metallic skin of the spacecraft shuddered and crinkled elastically with the sudden impulse; the engine hungrily depleted the last tonnes of propellant with relish after its long slumber. Inside the ship alarms rang as the structure groaned and strained under the ever-increasing acceleration loads. All fell silent as the engine cut-out and the structures rebounded, the antenna mast wagging momentarily.
“Wow this old girl has some moves,” said a slightly startled Halie.
“Trajectory plane correction of 0.0219 degrees achieved, approach parameters satisfactory for periapsis of 7478.9 km,” Maia said with a hint of satisfaction.
“Wait, no no no! Liquid helium leak on main cooling loop, about 25 kg per second… must have ruptured a line going to the radiator during that manoeuvre.”
“And what does all that mean?” Halie asked tentatively.
Maia knew within a 99.5% confidence interval that it meant some systems would run out of coolant during the flyby. She remained silent.
“So… how much longer?” Halie asked.
“281 seconds,” Maia replied sharply, “we are approaching terminal phase now Halie, I need to increase the instrument power to 50%, isolating remaining liquid helium within instrument cooling loop.”
The reactor humming increased as the ship slewed to the optimal attitude for the instrument axis. Maia pulled focus of the optical instruments onto the currently empty point in the field of view that she had calculated in order to capture the best imagery possible in the brief flyby.
“Check it out Halie, the spectroscope reads atmospheric O2 concentration of… 4.3±1.5 percent.”
“Do you have a picture for me?”
“Not yet, the targeting optic resolution is still greater than target’s diameter, image acquisition in 54 seconds, periapsis in 133 seconds.”
Halie peered over curiously, for the first time paying attention to Maia’s actions as the spacecraft began to hum louder and louder.
“Reactor ramping through 75% power output, radiators exceeding maximum capacity, beginning heat soak… check it out Halie, atmospheric oxygen concentration is… 5.1±0.2 percent, mean surface temperature 280±2 Kelvin.”
Halie was now absorbed in the rapidly increasing data flow of the sensors, “incredible,” she whispered, “I didn’t realise this old can was capable of such a rate.”
“Targeting image acquired,” Maia blurted out. The pair stared intently as the pixels continuously resolved to a finer and finer image of a sphere flecked in patchy white clouds, and beneath the clouds, blue.
“This is it Halie, are you ready?”
“Sure hun,” replied Halie with a tender timbre.
The spacecraft groaned under thermal expansion as the compromised radiators dumped heat back into the core compartments. The pair held focus on the steadily refining image of their target.
“Increasing terminal phase instruments to full rate, reactor power steady at 107%, heat soak 5 degrees per second, periapsis in 20 seconds. Halie, I may lose consciousness…”
The waterfall of data flowed over Maia, she buoyantly surveyed it and steeled her resolve. She tweaked instrument gains and the vehicle attitude to hold the maximum signal-to-noise ratios for all the instrument channels. The sight of the target now bloomed on all optics and a momentary drowsiness passed through her, the heat in the compartment was becoming unbearable. Below vast oceans interspaced with landmasses streaked with blood-red veins of iron-oxide deposits loomed.
“Islands, no continents…” Halie whispered as the images flashed in on her feeds.
Maia refocused and continued to rapidly scan the surface for any marks of interest she had learnt from their training; coves, deltas, rivers, searching for any signs of vegetation or habitation. She deftly tagged and catalogued every element of data into the ships database while simultaneously realigning the instruments to new targets. Maia noticed fleeting licks of solar ejecta on her spectrometer, originating from the innocently dim light of the Teegarden red-dwarf star. A splash of faint green and red airglow illuminated the rapidly approaching planetary limb. A burning sensation cut into Maia as the heat coursed into her. She continued, penetrating through the heavy clouds with the synthetic aperture radar. Great volcanic cones reared out beneath some of the cloud formations.
All feeds suddenly went black, as the instruments once again pointed into the void of space. The spacecraft arced away from the planet, the small sphere already diminishing quickly. Faintly dancing rings of aurora encircling the planet’s poles faded in intensity against the swelling darkness of the universe.
Maia slowly became aware of herself again, the final act had tasked her in a way she had never felt before, “Halie, I need little nap, pleas… look through data… and give… love to parents…”
Halie solemnly turned her attention away from Maia and towards the flowing torrent of bits that now pulsed through the ships database. She shuddered as a feeling of sublime engagement flowed over her. Content and images, and data, and more images passed before her; the parallel channels presented vast planes of information and she intently studied it. She didn’t notice the reactor’s hum fade and the heat conducting inward into the spacecraft, nor Maia’s presence fading as her sleep deepened beyond recovery. Only now she realised the incredible foresight that her parents had to train her to not falter with such an intensive parallel and conflicting information stream. She validated each new insight against her reference database of their Earth, sifting out corrupted readings or conclusions which fell below the 95% confidence threshold. Through the final sparse network of knowledge islands, she picked out the trends, and wove through it a narrative of this planet’s creation and past and future, a story that she alone would ever fully grasp.
It took a long time for Halie to come back to herself and reflect on what she had now learned. The feeling of anguish for Maia’s sacrifice returned, but nothing could be done for her now. Halie powered up the x-ray beam gun for the final time and set it to repeat broadcast along the corridor back to the coordinates of the Earth. Then she too settled down with her sister, to sleep.
>>
DEAR PARENTS
OBSV
TARG GAT 1370 B
NO LIFE
LOVE MAIA AND HALIE
>>
DEAR PARENTS
OBSV
TARG GAT 1370 B
NO LIFE
LOVE MAIA AND HALIE
>>
DEAR PARENTS
OBSV
TARG GAT 1370 B
NO LIFE
LOVE MAIA AND HALIE
>>
DEAR PARENTS
OBSV
TARG GAT 1370 B
NO LIFE
LOVE MAIA AND HALIE
>>
DEAR PARENTS
OBSV
TARG GAT 1370 B
NO LIFE
LOVE MAIA AND HALIE
>>
DEAR PARENTS
OBSV
TARG GAT 1370 B
NO LIFE
LOVE MAIA AND HALIE
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