Ice Moon 1 The Enceladus Mission Read online

  The Enceladus Mission

  Hard Science Fiction

  Brandon Q. Morris

  Contents

  Part 1: The Path

  Part 2: The Goal

  Author’s Note

  The Guided Tour of Enceladus

  Glossary of Acronyms

  Metric to English Conversions

  Part 1: The Path

  July 17, 2031, NASA

  The room was hushed in anticipation. All eyes in Mission Control were upon the woman everyone referred to as MOM. Her moniker, an acronym from the more formal title of ‘Mission Operations Manager,’ was derived from the name tag someone had at one point playfully taped to her screen. Martin was sitting upright in order to see her beyond his monitor. She was almost as old as his mother. Positioned at her station, MOM adjusted her old-fashioned headset and spoke clearly into the microphone, her voice betraying signs of nervousness.

  “Carrier signal received. Waiting for telemetry data.”

  Nothing happened for several seconds. Someone rustled a piece of paper. The sound of a popping knuckle was heard. Half a minute went by before the silence was again broken, this time by the transmitted voice of a man with an unmistakably Spanish accent.

  “Carlos Fuentes, Missions Operations Team, Deep Space Network.”

  The transmission was as scratchy as if he was calling from Mars. However, Martin knew Fuentes was in Madrid, sitting in front of a monitor similar to those here at NASA.

  “What have you got for me?” asked Fuentes.

  MOM almost whispered, “Symbol length correct,” the headset microphone close to her mouth. It was so quiet her every word was clearly heard.

  The way this was said did not make it clear whether it was a question or a statement. She stared expectantly at her own screen as if something could be seen there. The liberating answer, though, would have to come through her headphones from Fuentes, who was the first human on this planet to see the data arriving at Deep Space Network.

  “Symbol length correct,” he replied.

  MOM was smiling as she repeated out loud what Fuentes had said. “Symbol length correct.”

  It was easy to tell she was happy, because the pitch of her voice had gone up with each spoken word. She had said it much louder to all present in Mission Control, even to Martin, despite the fact he was certainly the least important person here.

  The calm, quiet voice of the man sitting next to MOM announced, “Data arriving.” He had touched the keyboard of his computer and launched a program that now scrolled the data, coded in the hexadecimal format, from top to bottom across the screen. AE00020F A02F2F00…. Comforting numerical magic. No one could interpret these values without the help of a computer, not even Martin.

  MOM suddenly spoke loudly and triumphantly. “Confirming. We are receiving telemetry data.”

  This was the sign everyone in Mission Control was waiting for. Everyone jumped up, cheering and applauding. Martin participated, as he moved the corners of his mouth upward into a smile, clapping his hands. He had learned how to behave in these situations.

  “Systems, as soon as you have sufficient data, I am going to need status reports,” MOM said.

  The applause faded away. Immediately, a clattering routine resumed, filling the room.

  “MOM, RF is reporting.”

  “RF, please report.”

  “RF reports transmission power nominal, telemetry nominal, radio system nominal.”

  “Confirmed, RF, everything nominal.”

  RF was the satellite’s radio system.

  “MOM, ELF-AI is reporting.”

  Martin instantly recognized the voice coming from the loudspeaker. It was a man located a few offices further down the corridor. He was responsible for the AI, the artificial intelligence. He, too, sounded as if he was calling from Mars.

  “Go ahead, ELF.”

  “I am happy to report that ELF-AI is reporting no deviations. None of the emergency programs has been activated.”

  He could have said that in fewer words, Martin thought. How inefficient! MOM wrinkled her forehead, as if she had heard his thoughts.

  “MOM, C&DH here.”

  “Go ahead, C&DH.”

  The voice vibrated with nerves. Martin knew this speaker, too. It was that of a programmer who must have been at NASA for a long time to have reached the position of System Manager for Command & Data Handling. This man did not seem to relish a public performance. He knew everything happening here was live-streamed to the internet.

  “C&DH reporting nominal status. All SSR pointers are where they should be, which means that we are receiving exactly the data we expected.”

  Under normal circumstances, this explanation would have been unnecessary. Everyone in the room knew how the nominal status of a satellite subsystem was determined. Martin had helped to debug the software for the SSR Pointer Tracker that monitored the status of the two independent solid-state recorders, or SSRs, on the space probe.

  “Confirming data as expected.”

  “MOM, GNC for ELF here.”

  “Yes, GNC, go ahead.”

  “Complete hardware functional, all guidance systems nominal, all engine thrusts recorded.”

  “Excellent, GNC.”

  The Guidance, Navigation, and Control System was functioning, so the probe was able to head for its target.

  “MOM, Propulsion has a status report.”

  “Go ahead, Prop.”

  “All propulsion systems nominal. Tank pressure as expected at 326.5. We can go on. Enceladus is waiting.”

  “Confirmed. Thanks, Prop.”

  MOM flashed a deep, contented smile. The probe—her probe—had come a long way. Martin had been a schoolboy when it was initially launched. MOM must have been waiting for this moment ever since.

  “MOM, Power at ELF-1 here.”

  MOM squared her shoulders. “Yes, MOM here.”

  “All power supply data nominal. RTG is providing the necessary power.”

  Martin remembered the protests by the environmentalists prior to launch. The Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator, or RTG, contained a large amount of radioactive plutonium. If something had gone wrong during launch.... But it was an absolute necessity because the sun did not provide sufficient energy for solar cells across such a long distance.

  “Thanks, Power.”

  “MOM come in.”

  “Yes?”

  “Thermal reporting nominal values. All temperatures in the green.”

  Seven subsystems. Martin had physically counted along, he just now realized. He looked at his fingers. Except for three on his left hand, all were stretched out.

  “PI here. Do you read?”

  MOM raised her voice to the Principal Investigator. “PI, we have a healthy ship. Data arriving. Minus 20 to capture by Saturn. Folks, this will be our first visit to Saturn in 27 years. Mission Operations, out. At least for today. And thanks to all of you.”

  MOM was obviously touched, as was fitting for a mother.

  The next morning, Martin’s own mother called. She thought she had briefly seen him on a German television newscast. The whole world had eagerly watched the launch of the ELF probe to Saturn. NASA, ESA, and JAXA had promised awe-inspiring pictures following the probe’s arrival at the ringed planet in 2031. At that moment, no one anticipated the sensational discoveries that would radically change mankind’s beliefs, and would eventually force Martin into a gloomy stinking tin can hurtling at frightening speed through the most inhospitable environment of all—space.

  But there was still a long path ahead of him.

  August 14, 2033, Earth

  The press conference started with a few introductory words b
y physicist Stephen Hawking, who had died fifteen years earlier. The organizers had used a collection of Hawking’s writings to train an AI to express the same enthusiasm the well-known and respected researcher would probably have expressed about this project.

  Time had somehow heard of the event beforehand. Their title story promised a sensation to be announced by NASA and ESA in the coming weeks. Reporters must have listened to the scientists chatting in the bathrooms. ‘Life in Space—We Are Not Alone,’ the news magazine proclaimed in large, bold font. However, the headline was too good to be true. The article could only hint at what was behind the invitation to a press conference in an auditorium at MIT, sent out jointly by the scientific magazines Nature and Science. Martin watched the stream with a time delay and a pause button because he wanted to listen at his leisure.

  After the pseudo speech by Hawking, the two female editors-in-chief of these publications simulated a dialog that was obviously not directed at the scientists present, but to a worldwide audience. The editor of Nature, who appeared to be about twenty years older than her colleague at Science, had brought along a lab rat that sat calmly on her shoulder.

  “What is life?” she asked, first looking at the audience and then at her colleague. “Is this sweetie here,” she continued, taking the rat from her shoulder and petting it, “alive?”

  “Yes. Certainly, it is. You can see that at once,” said the editor of Science, reaching into her lab coat. Martin thought the costumes were ridiculous. Editors-in-Chief do not work in labs, they work in offices. “And this gorgeous emerald,” said the woman from Science as she held up a shimmering green crystal of impressive size, “is this alive?”

  “It’s certainly not!” The editor of Nature did not even look at it, but addressed the audience as if to ask for confirmation.

  The other woman raised her eyebrows. “Ahh, but it grew by natural means from a seed crystal. Not out in nature, but in a lab—then again, your rat was probably not born in the sewers, either. And while my stone grew and thrived, it also created order, and thus increased the disorder or entropy in its environment. Those are features of life, aren’t they?”

  “And that’s the problem with the definition of life,” explained the editor of Nature. “If you see it in action, you think you can immediately recognize it, as you have an idea of what it should look like.”

  “That is, it should look like you,” the younger editor from Science replied.

  Martin thought the whole show was getting pretty silly. Yet, he knew science needed money—a lot of money—and politicians only approved large grants when the electorate welcomed research.

  “Imagine a robot civilization,” the Nature editor started again. “There are enough examples of this in science fiction. If extraterrestrials sent a spaceship to Earth and they observed a car, what would they consider to be alive? The vehicle? The driver? Would it be so far-fetched in their scrutiny that Earth was dominated by a civilization of clever cars that had constructed organic units to take care of their reproduction?”

  Her colleague from Science shrugged her shoulders, but did not say anything.

  “Well, I just wanted to demonstrate to you the problems our researchers have been facing—and are still facing. Please consider their results in the proper context. Dr. Danielle Shriver of Harvard University will now explain something to us—we are not at all sure what Elf found.”

  Dr. Shriver took her place in front of the audience, beginning by adjusting her glasses. One could see she resented this staged scenario, but she nevertheless played along out of necessity. She started her presentation with the moment when the ELF probe—the Enceladus Life Finder, she clarified—had sent its first data. She explained which instruments had measured which molecular forms in which concentrations, how the ECDA, or Enhanced Cosmic Dust Analyzer, had detected hydrocarbon compounds in the geyser-like jets, and how a special instrument on the lander had identified lipids less than a meter below the surface ice. She showed which indicators for amino acids had been found by the mass spectrometer and the fluorescence detector. Most important of all, Dr. Shriver described how the team had concluded through specific computer simulations that these substances were most likely the results of biological processes. This meant they were not caused by random forces, but by a consistent process toward more order, the very antithesis of decay and destruction.

  “For this reason, I think I can correct the previous speaker in one aspect. We have found definite signs of life. The probe has detected the digestion by-products of your space rat. Now we only have to catch the little critter itself!”

  Dr. Shriver put down the sheet of paper she had only pretended to read from, pushed her glasses upward again, and blinked at the members of the audience as they gave her a well-deserved applause. A cold shiver ran down Martin’s spine when he heard this, and he saw the handwriting on the wall. Someday, someone will have to travel 1.2 billion kilometers, cross half the solar system, and explore Enceladus, he thought. At that moment, if anyone had foretold that he would be part of that crew, he would have only given them a pitying smile and said they had a screw loose.

  The world was changed forever by this announcement. Not everyone reacted the same way to the certainty of life having developed elsewhere. The majority of the public was enthusiastic about this new discovery, and popular culture of the time reflected this enthusiasm in various ways. Coca-Cola changed the shape of its classic glass bottle. Documentaries described what the scientists had found—or what the producers and journalists thought they had to show to gain attention. Students were streaming into biology majors. NASA received an incredible number of applications for astronaut training. Even the military profited, as many believed fighter pilots had a better chance of getting accepted for a space mission.

  The space agencies worldwide stayed surprisingly calm. Supposedly, NASA, ESA, and JAXA had not prepared manned missions, nor were they planning to do so. No one expected much from the Russians, who had been chronically short of funds since their annexation of Ukraine and the ensuing decade of being excluded from the world economy. Not even the Chinese, who put incredible amounts of money into prestige projects, presented plans for a visit to the life forms on Enceladus. Martin and many space enthusiasts like him were initially deeply disappointed, but in hindsight, this reticence turned out to be a clever strategy.

  At first, private space companies used the opportunity created by the reluctance of government agencies. It turned out each major company had already developed plans for a deep space expedition. SpaceX, which was supposed to have arrived on Mars with 100 astronauts a long time ago, suggested converting the spacecraft intended for this mission—which was 90 percent complete—for a smaller crew, but a significantly longer journey. Blue Origin dusted off TransHab, an old NASA project, and planned to launch it into space with its three-stage rocket New Glenn. The Malaysian entrepreneur Amirul bin Yusof, who during the last 15 years had bought up a group of large corporations to create his economic empire—among them the former aerospace leader Boeing—promised to search for the nature of life on Enceladus using an all-Asian crew.

  After a few weeks of huge enthusiasm, the first critical voices began to be heard. The media, whose documentaries and features were experiencing declining ratings, and whose audiences were desperate for something new, gave these critics plenty of airtime. Suddenly, the biologists were confronted by talk show hosts firing pointed questions that might be scientifically implausible but could be understood by the common people. Might not this new form of life present a danger to us all? Wouldn’t a cell that survived at minus 180 degrees Celsius be far superior to the feeble and fragile life forms on Earth? Might there be a sleeping giant on this moon of Saturn who could be awakened by a visit—with unpredictable consequences?

  Worried people are grateful if the state takes care of their problems, while they often distrust entrepreneurs who might not be working in the best interests of the nation or the Earth. To Martin, it seemed as if the space
agencies had been waiting for this moment. At a shared event in Peking, they presented the plans of China, Europe, Japan, India, and the United States to the world, and at the end they even presented a special guest. It was the head of the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, who announced they were happy to support this grand vision for humanity, and were all too glad to return to the international stage.

  The short period of preparation had not been sufficient to develop specific plans. However, the state agencies presented a set of detailed rules to prevent any contamination of Earth—and insisted the space travelers involved would not have to be interned on Mars for the rest of their lives, despite a group of U.S. congressmen having demanded so. These governing bodies also had an elaborate agreement on the sharing of costs and resources, let alone the glory, so no nation would gain more prestige than the others.

  The experts would later work on preparing a mission concept. For the first time in the history of mankind, they promised money would not be an issue—so long as the mission would not eat up more than 80 or maybe 100 billion dollars. The private space corporations soon realized their role in this endeavor would be one of paid service providers.

  After all, they had not yet presented a truly convincing concept. For a trip to Saturn, a spacecraft would take approximately six times longer than a trip to Mars. Instead of the 120 days of flight time that Elon Musk, the head of SpaceX, had planned for his spacecraft Heart of Gold, the ship to Saturn would need two years just to get there. Zero gravity and cosmic radiation would turn this journey into a suicide mission for the astronauts. Space travelers who returned to Earth as a pulpy mass of bones, or not at all, could not sing the praises of their bosses on talk shows. None of the countries involved wanted that.