The Martian

Then there’s the issue of heat. It’s a good idea to keep electronics above -40C. The temperature today is a brisk -63C.

The battery was big and easy to identify, but I had no clue where the heaters were. Even if I knew, it’d be too risky to hook them directly to power. I could easily fry the whole system.

So instead, I went to good old “Spare Parts” Rover 1, and stole it’s environment heater. I’ve gutted that poor rover so much, it looks like I parked it in a bad part of town.

Bringing the heater to my “workbench,” I hooked it to Hab power. Then I rested it in the Lander where the battery used to be.

Now I wait. And hope.

LOG ENTRY: SOL 96

I was really hoping I’d wake up to a functional Lander, but no such luck. Its high-gain antenna is right where I last saw it. Why does that matter? Well, I’ll tell ya…

If the Lander comes back to life (and that’s a big if) it’ll try to establish contact with Earth. Problem is, nobody’s listening. It’s not like the Pathfinder team is hanging around JPL just in case their long dead probe is repaired by a wayward astronaut.

The Deep Space Network and SETI are my best bets for picking up the signal. If either of them caught a blip from Pathfinder, they’d tell JPL.

JPL would quickly figure out what was going on, especially when they triangulated the signal to my landing site.

They’d tell the Lander where Earth is, and it would angle the high-gain antenna appropriately. That there, the angling of the antenna, is how I’ll know if it linked up.

So far, no action.

There’s still hope. Any number of reasons could be delaying things. The rover heater is designed to heat air at 1 atmosphere. The thin Martian air severely hampers its ability to work. So the electronics might need more time to warm up.

Also, Earth is only visible during the day. I (hopefully) fixed the Lander yesterday evening. It’s morning now, so most of the intervening time has been night. No Earth.

Sojourner’s also showing no signs of life. It’s been in the nice, warm environment of the Hab all night, with plenty of light on its sparkling clean solar cells. Maybe it’s running an extended self-check, or staying still until it hears from the Lander or something.

I’ll just have to put it out of my mind for now.

PATHFINDER LOG: SOL 0

BOOT SEQUENCE INITIATED

TIME 00:00:00

LOSS OF POWER DETECTED, TIME/DATE UNRELIABLE

LOADING OS...

VXWARE OPERATING SYSTEM (C) WIND RIVER SYSTEMS

PERFORMING HARDWARE CHECK:

INT. TEMPERATURE: -34C

EXT. TEMPERATURE: NONFUNCTIONAL

BATTERY: FULL

HIGAIN: OK

LOGAIN: OK

WIND SENSOR: NONFUNCTIONAL

METEOROLOGY: NONFUNCTIONAL

ASI: NONFUNCTIONAL

IMAGER: OK

ROVER RAMP: NONFUNCTIONAL

SOLAR A: NONFUNCTIONAL

SOLAR B: NONFUNCTIONAL

SOLAR C: NONFUNCTIONAL

HARDWARE CHECK COMPLETE

BROADCASTING STATUS

LISTENING FOR TELEMETRY SIGNAL...

LISTENING FOR TELEMETRY SIGNAL...

LISTENING FOR TELEMETRY SIGNAL...

SIGNAL ACQUIRED

Chapter 11

“Something’s coming in… yes… yes! It’s Pathfinder!”

The room burst in to applause and cheers. Venkat slapped an unknown technician heartily on the back while Bruce pumped his fist in the air.

The ad-hoc control center was an accomplishment in itself. JPL had just 20 days to piece together antiquated computers, repair broken components, network everything, and install hastily made software to interact with the modern Deep Space Network. A team of engineers had worked around the clock, finishing only two days earlier.

The room itself was formerly a conference room; JPL had no space ready for the sudden need. Crammed with computers and equipment, little space was left over for the many spectators squeezing in.

One Associated Press camera team was permitted. The rest of the media would have to satisfy themselves with the live AP feed, and await a press conference.

Venkat turned to Bruce. “God damn, Bruce. You really pulled a rabbit out of your hat this time! Good work!”

“I’m just the director,” Bruce said modestly. “Thank the guys who got all this shit working.”

“Oh I will!” Venkat beamed. “But first I have to talk to my new best friend!”

Turning to the headsetted man at the communications console, Venkat asked “What’s you’re name, new best friend?”

“Tim,” he said, not taking his eyes off the screen.

“What now?” Venkat asked.

“We sent the return telemetry automatically. It’ll get there in just over 11 minutes. Once it does, Pathfinder will start high-gain transmissions. So it’ll be 22 minutes till we hear from it again.”

“Venkat’s got a doctorate in physics, Tim,” Bruce said, “You don’t need to explain transmission time to him.”

Tim shrugged. “You can never tell with managers.”

“What was in the transmission we got?” Venkat asked.

“Just the bare bones. A hardware self check. It’s got a lot of “nonfunctional” systems, cause they were on the panels Watney removed.”

“What about the camera?”

“It says the imager’s working. We’ll have it take a panorama as soon as we can.”

LOG ENTRY: SOL 97

It worked!

Holy fucking shit it worked!

I just checked the Lander. The high gain antenna is angled directly at Earth! Pathfinder has no way of knowing where it is, so it has no way of knowing where Earth is. The only way for it to find out is getting a signal.

They know I’m alive!

Happy dance, happy dance, I’m doin’ the happy dance!

All right. Enough happy dance. Time to make with the communicatin’!

“We received the high-gain response just over half an hour ago,” Venkat said to the assembled press. “We immediately directed Pathfinder to take a panoramic image. Hopefully, Watney has some kind of message for us. Questions?”

The sea of reporters raised their hands.

“Cathy, let’s start with you,” Venkat said, pointing her out.

“Thanks,” she said. “Have you had any contact with the Sojourner rover?”

“Unfortunately, no,” he replied. “The Lander hasn’t been able to connect to Sojourner, and we have no way to contact it directly.”

“What might be wrong with Sojourner?”

“I can’t even speculate,” Venkat said. “After spending that long on Mars, anything could be wrong with it.”