Proxima: A Human Exploration of Mars
- Thread starter defconh3ck
- Start date
Thanks very much! I'm super glad that these shots showcase just how dynamic and busy these kinds of operational periods. The next few years will be some of the busiest for the whole program and I'm excited that the story gets to only grow in intensity.All lovely images from Jay today. Odyssey was certainly in focus during Monday's chapter, but the images from Mars are just as stunning here, particularly the shot of Minerva's departure burn. Looking forward to next week's chapter as always
As always Jay continues to put out nothing but bangers! The final shot is easily my favorite
So so glad you like it, it's really something specialAs always Jay continues to put out nothing but bangers! The final shot is easily my favorite
Chapter 23: A Fleet at Work
Hi everyone, happy Monday! This week, space is very busy, and our various crews in orbit have a lot of work cut out for them. The return of Olympus 3, and the arrival at Mars of Olympus 4 is indicative of the ways in which our architecture is shifting towards sorties at Mars rather than one shot missions. It is, after all, the goal of this series to make space exploration sustainable. I wanna give a huge shoutout once again to Jay and Zarbon, who have done a huge amount of work on this project. They've really raised the bar, in my eyes, for this project. I couldn't do it without them! Anyway, let's get into it!
Chapter 23: A Fleet at Work
Mars would once again come into view, as the crew of Olympus 4 would sail into the sphere of influence of the planet, and begin the long fall as the year 1999 raised its head. Prometheus had performed exceptionally, the lessons learned from Minerva and her crew members had been invaluable in learning how to live and work in space. The first sighting of Mars, now far more expected, was marked with celebration, and a downlink packet from the crew would commemorate their arrival, the second in a series of great achievements for the Olympus Program. Commander Teller, making use of the new IMAX cameras, would showcase the long fall towards the planet, in a documentary being filmed in collaboration with National Geographic. The crew had also demonstrated several on the fly repair techniques, as two out of six life science racks experienced faults during cruise. This kind of maintenance, practiced onboard Odyssey, would come as second nature, and the crew were able to preserve the critical experiments onboard. After many months of transit, the planet Mars would loom large in their cupola window, and the Base Station would establish stable uplink and downlink rates. Orbital insertion would be certainly less eventful than it had on Olympus 3, the crew hoped. On March 27th, the crew would strap themselves into their acceleration couches, and prepare for the coming burn. Turning of the keys would once again light the Valkyries of Prometheus, bringing to life a great beast that had been quiescent for so long. The vehicle rattled and groaned as the force of acceleration pushed the astronauts further into their couches, and the solid tone of the flight computer would indicate a clean tank separation. The vehicle, now only on its core stage, would continue to break for orbit, the geiger counter onboard ticking ever so gently, a comforting reminder that all was well. The electronic eyes of the orbiter fleet would train their sensors on the incoming ship, waiting and watching, catching the glow of the spacecraft against the cold, lifeless background of the planet. The flight computer, detecting minor variations, would command the RCS to fire, keeping the engines and ships inline as they continued the last few moments of the burn. With a healthy tone from the spacecraft’s flight computer, the engines would shut off, and the OMS system would begin to pulse, correcting their orbit as they began to orbit the planet as a true satellite. It was a moment of triumph, humanity’s second crew now orbited the Red Planet, captured in a safe and secure orbit. Corvus, having also completed successful orbital insertion, would begin the task of lining up to dock with the Base Station, aggregating all of the components of Olympus 4 at their predestined positions. The Base Station and MTV would soon lock eyes with one another, and begin the process of docking. Humanity’s system for travel to the Red Planet, one of the most expensive projects of all time, worked in repetition, no longer the dream of science fiction writers. The crew, boarding their home away from home, would begin to make preparations for their landing at Isdis Planitia, scheduled for the Fall. The second expedition to the Red Planet was well and truly underway.
The months of Olympus 3’s transit dragged on, but the image of Earth, filling their viewscreens and subsequently their window, was their allowed moment of respite, a moment to rest and a moment to weep. It had been a long road, getting here, and the time for joy could once again be felt, no longer was the crew surrounded by an air of tension that governed their actions. Home, once a distant point of light in the sky, now sat, blue and green and white in front of them. It was, in all respects, a homecoming unlike any had ever seen before. The spring in the Northern Hemisphere had turned to summer, and lush greens could be made out from their scopes. Soon, their arrival would loom large, and the tired crew would prepare the ship for the events that were coming. The arrival burn, a long, complicated endeavor, would push the vehicle to its limits on acceleration, with the fuel on the MTV running the lowest that it had during its entire service life. Preparations were also made, as they grew ever closer, to activate the Earth Return Lifeboat in the unlikely event that Minerva could not complete the burn, allowing the lifeboat to return the 8 crew members on a direct entry, while still slowing down as much as possible. It was a possibility they had trained for, but as the mission was planned, reuse of the MTV core was always the preferred option. Fatigue was starting to eat away at the crew, but the now more frequent communication with Mission Control brought some relief. They had done remarkably well at following their routine, exercising regularly to stave off bone density loss, and eating well. Still, the pull of Earth’s gravity would exhaust them after two and a half years in space, and medical teams on the ground were doing all they could to prepare for Olympus 3’s homecoming. Intrepid stood ready on the pad, preparing for the great leap into orbit as she waited to bring the crew home to Earth, ready to walk on the soil of their homeworld once more. Soon, the Earth would loom large in their windows, and the crew would make their way to the flight deck to prepare for orbital insertion.
July 19th would see the crew, falling rapidly towards the planet Earth, make preparations to come home. For nearly 3 years, they had been in space, on another world, and most importantly, on the adventure of a lifetime. The journey, however, was not quite over. The crew, now strapped into their acceleration couches, would get ready to fire the Valkyrie engines one final time. The eyes of the world, now familiar with the great feeling of walking on other worlds, would watch once more, as the people in mission control milled about, counting down the hours until the final burn. Time seemed to pass much slower in these moments, as the world watched. Soon, the hours would turn to minutes, and the crew, tired from their journey, would turn the keys for the control drum actuators to move one final time. The Valkyrie’s response was immediate, pushing the crew into their seats with greater force than ever before as the vehicle used up what fuel remained. The vehicle, like the crew, seemed tired, and new noises accompanied the ever familiar click of the geiger counter as the Earth moved under their feet. Minerva continued to do what she always did, her job, and damn good job of it she did. The vehicle shuddered and groaned as the RCS and gyroscopes kept the ship in line, pressing the crew into their seats further and further. On their flight control screens, a familiar light: CAPTURE CONFIRM, but this was only one step of many. The Valkyries continued to push, and the reading on fuel levels continued to drop. Their apogee, for so long just a number on their flight instrumentation to ignore, was now dropping, bringing their orbit lower and lower, until finally, the engines would shut off for the final time, and the crew would be left in the silence of the moment. Unbuckling from their seats, they quickly moved to the windows of the great ship, observing the planet in all its majesty. Intrepid, poised for launch since Minerva’s entry into Earth’s sphere of influence, would finally leap off the pad, carrying its support crew to a rendezvous with the fatigued but victorious crew. The hatch opening, filmed from a camera mounted in the docking tunnel, was a moment of triumph. The Olympus 3 crew, wearing the jumpsuits they had departed in, would move through the hatch, colliding into embrace with their retrieval crew. The first human crew, fresh from the arms of the Red Planet, once again with their earthling compatriots. The Olympus 3 crew, as jovial as they looked, seemed tired, and knew that their period of readjustment on Earth would be one of many hurdles still to face them. Minerva and Intrepid would coast back to the orbital neighborhood of Odyssey, Zarya and Hera, still undergoing refit for its deployment to Venus later in the year. Soon, the crew of Olympus 3 would say goodbye to their great ship, ready to be embraced by the arms of loved ones on the planet below. Commander Douglass would be the last through Minerva’s hatch as they prepared the orbiter for departure, finally bringing to a close this epic voyage. In a last minute decision, she would remove her name tag from her flight suit, and slip it into a locker onboard the MTV, a piece of herself to always remain in space. Intrepid would come to a twilight stop at the Kennedy Space Center, bringing with it the first ever human crew to return from another planet - triumphant, exhausted, and captivating in the eyes of billions of people around the world. It was done, humans had walked on their second world, and Olympus 3 was only the beginning.
The mission patch for Olympus 5V, the first crewed mission to the Veiled Planet.
In orbit, final preparations were being made to Hera in preparation for her mission to the veiled planet Venus. Fueling operations had taken double the time required for a Mars sortie, and assembly crews had their hands full in preparation for departure, securing the tanks and equipment to the exterior of the ship. The crew of Olympus 5V, moving as quickly as they could through their training, would soon enter final quarantine before launch, a slimmed down complement of astronauts from all across the Olympus Partnership. Their commander, George McMaster, was a former Valiant flier who had returned to NASA after originally training to fly onboard the shuttle in the mid-80s. The MTV pilot, Maxime Martel of ESA, had been a Dassault test pilot, his work critical to development of the Mirage series of fighter jets. Russia’s Gennady Morozov would act as the flight surgeon for this mission, having trained the previous flight surgeons before him. Hideki Yoshioka of NASDA would be the first mission specialist, and payload deployment officer onboard, helping to conduct experiments pertaining to planetary science and heliophysics. NASA’s Millie Laurence and Steven Chang Arnold would fly as Mission Specialists 2 and 3, enabling research and observation of this alien new world. Atlantis would launch the crew of Olympus 5V in September, as Intrepid entered a planned period of maintenance. They would dock with the MTV on November 7th, 1999, and prepared to move crew and cargo over from the orbiter. One of their first tasks was an EVA, to install 3 probes provided by the Russian State Space Agency, ESA, and NASA, to be deployed at Venus. The first, the Cytherean Lofted Ultralong-range Explorer, or CLUE, was a balloon probe built by NASA to explore the turbulent upper atmosphere of the planet. The Venus Infrared Scanning And Geology Explorer, VISAGE, was an ESA built orbiter with the aim of complementing work done by Magellan, to help decode the geological features on the planets surface. The Russian State Space Agency would contribute Venera-C1, a repurposed flight spare designed to make it to the surface of the planet. The three spacecraft, stored snug against the body of the MTV, would soon see their destination before their very eyes.
On Thanksgiving day, 1999, the crew of Olympus 5V would be pressed into their seats as the engines of the great spacecraft broke them free of Mars orbit, pushing them higher and faster, and closer to the sun than any human being before them. They would soon see the Earth begin to fall away from them, as their strange vehicle carried them ever closer to a veiled world. The transit of 150 days would be fast, much faster than the up to 7 month transfers of the outbound Mars missions. Since the age of Apollo, the idea of a Venus mission had captivated the space agencies of the world, and with the age of Olympus now in full swing it finally felt like the time. The goal of the mission, as they spent their 30 days in orbit of Venus, would be to gather as much information about the planet as possible, and examine the benefit of orbital campaigns to a planet whose surface was too inhospitable to land on. Hera herself would act as a testbed, experimenting with the utility of the MTV as a command center for uncrewed spacecraft, something the Olympus partners had been considering for asteroid exploration, as well as debuting upgraded life support and water recycling racks. Within the various NASA centers around the country, work was well underway on the next generation of space probes, missions that would push the boundaries of mission design and spaceflight as a whole. The latest flagship, known only as JOME - The Jovian Moon Explorer, would debut new technologies like multi mode propulsion to explore the mini solar system around the gargantuan world. Several small probes would be deployed from the vehicle to explore in great detail the microcosms of the moons of the planet. Planned for launch tentatively in 2005, this grand tour had a design life of nearly 20 years, and would complement the work already being done by Galileo. Cometary exploration had become a point of discussion for the European Space Agency, and their success with Giotto had inspired them to take the lead in planning their latest mission to 67P Churyumov/Gerasimenko, discovered in the 1960s by Ukrainian astronomers. Their mission, Persephone, would see an orbiter travel to the icy world in 2004, and deploy a sample return lander which would allow for cometary regolith to be brought back to Earth, stored in a closed loop cooling system to preserve ice from the comet. From Goddard Space Flight Center, in partnership with CNES, Solar Sentinel, or SolSen, was being developed to learn more about humanity’s star, the Sun using a unique shielded design. All of these missions, as well as the work done by the Olympus program, enabled humanity to learn more about the Solar System, and truly bring about a second renaissance of scientific understanding.
Chapter 23: A Fleet at Work
Mars would once again come into view, as the crew of Olympus 4 would sail into the sphere of influence of the planet, and begin the long fall as the year 1999 raised its head. Prometheus had performed exceptionally, the lessons learned from Minerva and her crew members had been invaluable in learning how to live and work in space. The first sighting of Mars, now far more expected, was marked with celebration, and a downlink packet from the crew would commemorate their arrival, the second in a series of great achievements for the Olympus Program. Commander Teller, making use of the new IMAX cameras, would showcase the long fall towards the planet, in a documentary being filmed in collaboration with National Geographic. The crew had also demonstrated several on the fly repair techniques, as two out of six life science racks experienced faults during cruise. This kind of maintenance, practiced onboard Odyssey, would come as second nature, and the crew were able to preserve the critical experiments onboard. After many months of transit, the planet Mars would loom large in their cupola window, and the Base Station would establish stable uplink and downlink rates. Orbital insertion would be certainly less eventful than it had on Olympus 3, the crew hoped. On March 27th, the crew would strap themselves into their acceleration couches, and prepare for the coming burn. Turning of the keys would once again light the Valkyries of Prometheus, bringing to life a great beast that had been quiescent for so long. The vehicle rattled and groaned as the force of acceleration pushed the astronauts further into their couches, and the solid tone of the flight computer would indicate a clean tank separation. The vehicle, now only on its core stage, would continue to break for orbit, the geiger counter onboard ticking ever so gently, a comforting reminder that all was well. The electronic eyes of the orbiter fleet would train their sensors on the incoming ship, waiting and watching, catching the glow of the spacecraft against the cold, lifeless background of the planet. The flight computer, detecting minor variations, would command the RCS to fire, keeping the engines and ships inline as they continued the last few moments of the burn. With a healthy tone from the spacecraft’s flight computer, the engines would shut off, and the OMS system would begin to pulse, correcting their orbit as they began to orbit the planet as a true satellite. It was a moment of triumph, humanity’s second crew now orbited the Red Planet, captured in a safe and secure orbit. Corvus, having also completed successful orbital insertion, would begin the task of lining up to dock with the Base Station, aggregating all of the components of Olympus 4 at their predestined positions. The Base Station and MTV would soon lock eyes with one another, and begin the process of docking. Humanity’s system for travel to the Red Planet, one of the most expensive projects of all time, worked in repetition, no longer the dream of science fiction writers. The crew, boarding their home away from home, would begin to make preparations for their landing at Isdis Planitia, scheduled for the Fall. The second expedition to the Red Planet was well and truly underway.
Prometheus completes her Mars Orbit Insertion Burn, bringing the crew of Olympus 4 close to their next objective, landing in Isdis Planitia. The next critical steps would be docking with the Base Station and rendezvousing with their lander, Corvus.
The months of Olympus 3’s transit dragged on, but the image of Earth, filling their viewscreens and subsequently their window, was their allowed moment of respite, a moment to rest and a moment to weep. It had been a long road, getting here, and the time for joy could once again be felt, no longer was the crew surrounded by an air of tension that governed their actions. Home, once a distant point of light in the sky, now sat, blue and green and white in front of them. It was, in all respects, a homecoming unlike any had ever seen before. The spring in the Northern Hemisphere had turned to summer, and lush greens could be made out from their scopes. Soon, their arrival would loom large, and the tired crew would prepare the ship for the events that were coming. The arrival burn, a long, complicated endeavor, would push the vehicle to its limits on acceleration, with the fuel on the MTV running the lowest that it had during its entire service life. Preparations were also made, as they grew ever closer, to activate the Earth Return Lifeboat in the unlikely event that Minerva could not complete the burn, allowing the lifeboat to return the 8 crew members on a direct entry, while still slowing down as much as possible. It was a possibility they had trained for, but as the mission was planned, reuse of the MTV core was always the preferred option. Fatigue was starting to eat away at the crew, but the now more frequent communication with Mission Control brought some relief. They had done remarkably well at following their routine, exercising regularly to stave off bone density loss, and eating well. Still, the pull of Earth’s gravity would exhaust them after two and a half years in space, and medical teams on the ground were doing all they could to prepare for Olympus 3’s homecoming. Intrepid stood ready on the pad, preparing for the great leap into orbit as she waited to bring the crew home to Earth, ready to walk on the soil of their homeworld once more. Soon, the Earth would loom large in their windows, and the crew would make their way to the flight deck to prepare for orbital insertion.
Slipping across the terminator, Minerva and the crew of Olympus 3 would arrive home. Their historic mission drawing to a close, they would return to a hero's welcome, and a fundamentally changed planet Earth.
July 19th would see the crew, falling rapidly towards the planet Earth, make preparations to come home. For nearly 3 years, they had been in space, on another world, and most importantly, on the adventure of a lifetime. The journey, however, was not quite over. The crew, now strapped into their acceleration couches, would get ready to fire the Valkyrie engines one final time. The eyes of the world, now familiar with the great feeling of walking on other worlds, would watch once more, as the people in mission control milled about, counting down the hours until the final burn. Time seemed to pass much slower in these moments, as the world watched. Soon, the hours would turn to minutes, and the crew, tired from their journey, would turn the keys for the control drum actuators to move one final time. The Valkyrie’s response was immediate, pushing the crew into their seats with greater force than ever before as the vehicle used up what fuel remained. The vehicle, like the crew, seemed tired, and new noises accompanied the ever familiar click of the geiger counter as the Earth moved under their feet. Minerva continued to do what she always did, her job, and damn good job of it she did. The vehicle shuddered and groaned as the RCS and gyroscopes kept the ship in line, pressing the crew into their seats further and further. On their flight control screens, a familiar light: CAPTURE CONFIRM, but this was only one step of many. The Valkyries continued to push, and the reading on fuel levels continued to drop. Their apogee, for so long just a number on their flight instrumentation to ignore, was now dropping, bringing their orbit lower and lower, until finally, the engines would shut off for the final time, and the crew would be left in the silence of the moment. Unbuckling from their seats, they quickly moved to the windows of the great ship, observing the planet in all its majesty. Intrepid, poised for launch since Minerva’s entry into Earth’s sphere of influence, would finally leap off the pad, carrying its support crew to a rendezvous with the fatigued but victorious crew. The hatch opening, filmed from a camera mounted in the docking tunnel, was a moment of triumph. The Olympus 3 crew, wearing the jumpsuits they had departed in, would move through the hatch, colliding into embrace with their retrieval crew. The first human crew, fresh from the arms of the Red Planet, once again with their earthling compatriots. The Olympus 3 crew, as jovial as they looked, seemed tired, and knew that their period of readjustment on Earth would be one of many hurdles still to face them. Minerva and Intrepid would coast back to the orbital neighborhood of Odyssey, Zarya and Hera, still undergoing refit for its deployment to Venus later in the year. Soon, the crew of Olympus 3 would say goodbye to their great ship, ready to be embraced by the arms of loved ones on the planet below. Commander Douglass would be the last through Minerva’s hatch as they prepared the orbiter for departure, finally bringing to a close this epic voyage. In a last minute decision, she would remove her name tag from her flight suit, and slip it into a locker onboard the MTV, a piece of herself to always remain in space. Intrepid would come to a twilight stop at the Kennedy Space Center, bringing with it the first ever human crew to return from another planet - triumphant, exhausted, and captivating in the eyes of billions of people around the world. It was done, humans had walked on their second world, and Olympus 3 was only the beginning.
The mission patch for Olympus 5V, the first crewed mission to the Veiled Planet.
In orbit, final preparations were being made to Hera in preparation for her mission to the veiled planet Venus. Fueling operations had taken double the time required for a Mars sortie, and assembly crews had their hands full in preparation for departure, securing the tanks and equipment to the exterior of the ship. The crew of Olympus 5V, moving as quickly as they could through their training, would soon enter final quarantine before launch, a slimmed down complement of astronauts from all across the Olympus Partnership. Their commander, George McMaster, was a former Valiant flier who had returned to NASA after originally training to fly onboard the shuttle in the mid-80s. The MTV pilot, Maxime Martel of ESA, had been a Dassault test pilot, his work critical to development of the Mirage series of fighter jets. Russia’s Gennady Morozov would act as the flight surgeon for this mission, having trained the previous flight surgeons before him. Hideki Yoshioka of NASDA would be the first mission specialist, and payload deployment officer onboard, helping to conduct experiments pertaining to planetary science and heliophysics. NASA’s Millie Laurence and Steven Chang Arnold would fly as Mission Specialists 2 and 3, enabling research and observation of this alien new world. Atlantis would launch the crew of Olympus 5V in September, as Intrepid entered a planned period of maintenance. They would dock with the MTV on November 7th, 1999, and prepared to move crew and cargo over from the orbiter. One of their first tasks was an EVA, to install 3 probes provided by the Russian State Space Agency, ESA, and NASA, to be deployed at Venus. The first, the Cytherean Lofted Ultralong-range Explorer, or CLUE, was a balloon probe built by NASA to explore the turbulent upper atmosphere of the planet. The Venus Infrared Scanning And Geology Explorer, VISAGE, was an ESA built orbiter with the aim of complementing work done by Magellan, to help decode the geological features on the planets surface. The Russian State Space Agency would contribute Venera-C1, a repurposed flight spare designed to make it to the surface of the planet. The three spacecraft, stored snug against the body of the MTV, would soon see their destination before their very eyes.
Under the thrust of her three Valkyrie engines, Olympus 5V breaks orbit and heads to the planet Venus, meeting a rare window to orbit this long misunderstood world. The Delta V requirements for this mission would necessitate a series of drop tanks and complex staging maneuvers.
On Thanksgiving day, 1999, the crew of Olympus 5V would be pressed into their seats as the engines of the great spacecraft broke them free of Mars orbit, pushing them higher and faster, and closer to the sun than any human being before them. They would soon see the Earth begin to fall away from them, as their strange vehicle carried them ever closer to a veiled world. The transit of 150 days would be fast, much faster than the up to 7 month transfers of the outbound Mars missions. Since the age of Apollo, the idea of a Venus mission had captivated the space agencies of the world, and with the age of Olympus now in full swing it finally felt like the time. The goal of the mission, as they spent their 30 days in orbit of Venus, would be to gather as much information about the planet as possible, and examine the benefit of orbital campaigns to a planet whose surface was too inhospitable to land on. Hera herself would act as a testbed, experimenting with the utility of the MTV as a command center for uncrewed spacecraft, something the Olympus partners had been considering for asteroid exploration, as well as debuting upgraded life support and water recycling racks. Within the various NASA centers around the country, work was well underway on the next generation of space probes, missions that would push the boundaries of mission design and spaceflight as a whole. The latest flagship, known only as JOME - The Jovian Moon Explorer, would debut new technologies like multi mode propulsion to explore the mini solar system around the gargantuan world. Several small probes would be deployed from the vehicle to explore in great detail the microcosms of the moons of the planet. Planned for launch tentatively in 2005, this grand tour had a design life of nearly 20 years, and would complement the work already being done by Galileo. Cometary exploration had become a point of discussion for the European Space Agency, and their success with Giotto had inspired them to take the lead in planning their latest mission to 67P Churyumov/Gerasimenko, discovered in the 1960s by Ukrainian astronomers. Their mission, Persephone, would see an orbiter travel to the icy world in 2004, and deploy a sample return lander which would allow for cometary regolith to be brought back to Earth, stored in a closed loop cooling system to preserve ice from the comet. From Goddard Space Flight Center, in partnership with CNES, Solar Sentinel, or SolSen, was being developed to learn more about humanity’s star, the Sun using a unique shielded design. All of these missions, as well as the work done by the Olympus program, enabled humanity to learn more about the Solar System, and truly bring about a second renaissance of scientific understanding.
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Bcasi basically said everything I have to say on this one. I felt every moment of this.
Olympus 5V looks GORGEOUS here. As always, Jay knocks it out of the park. And Zarbon's patch for 5V is wonderful!
Olympus 5V looks GORGEOUS here. As always, Jay knocks it out of the park. And Zarbon's patch for 5V is wonderful!
Thanks very much. Picking up the pace has definitely been an added challenge to write but I've enjoyed it none the lessReally interesting contrast of missions here: Olympus 4, an exciting and enthusiastic return to Mars; Olympus 3, the weary and emotional return to Earth; and Olympus 5V, representing strange and uncharted territory once again. Loving the program in the swing of things
It felt fitting that Hera's first flight come in the form of something spectacular!
Hi everyone, I've had a very busy day today so our regularly scheduled image annex will be going up tomorrow morning instead of today, many apologies for that. I hope you all enjoyed the chapter this week, more to come!
Chapter 23.5: Image Annex
Chapter 23.5: Image Annex
Hi everyone, I apologize for the delay in posting, I've been rather busy over the last few days and didn't have the time to sit down and curate this image annex for you, but the time has come! We've got some really amazing shots from Jay this week that I've been sitting on, really eager to showcase them for you all today and highlight how busy space has become. If my planning serves me correctly, this should be the maximum number of Olympus missions being active at once, but of course that could change in the future depending on how things go. Anyway, let's take a look!
Hi everyone, I apologize for the delay in posting, I've been rather busy over the last few days and didn't have the time to sit down and curate this image annex for you, but the time has come! We've got some really amazing shots from Jay this week that I've been sitting on, really eager to showcase them for you all today and highlight how busy space has become. If my planning serves me correctly, this should be the maximum number of Olympus missions being active at once, but of course that could change in the future depending on how things go. Anyway, let's take a look!
Olympus 4 prepares for Martian Orbit Insertion, having completed the trek between the planets. All that is left is to align her in the correct attitude, and fire up the Valkyrie engines for the multi-minute maneuver.
Her drop tanks cleanly separating, Prometheus pushes on towards capture. The Valkyrie's engineering speaks volumes, showcasing their robust design and long mission life. The spent drop tanks would coast back into a heliocentric orbit.
The final seconds of the burn are always the most crucial, and Prometheus' crew is already looking at their shutdown procedures. Soon, the vehicle would coast through Martian orbit, and link up with the Base Station complex.
Back at Earth, Minerva enters the final hours of her interplanetary journey, coasting towards her capture burn to bring her crew home. It has been a long voyage, and the sight of the Earth filling the windows of the ship brings great relief to the crew, but they are not out of the woods yet.
Slipping into orbital night, the longest burn of the mission can take place, capturing the crew into a stable orbit around the Earth for retrieval by Space Shuttle Intrepid.
At long last, the burn is over, and the first human crew on Mars can watch the Earth pass below them, just 250 miles away. Soon, Intrepid would rendezvous with the crew and retrieve them, bringing to a close the greatest Odyssey in human history.
Elsewhere in LEO, a different beast was being born. Hera, in her four tank configuration, is seen here from Space Shuttle Atlantis as the two vehicles drifted away from each other, after delivering the crew of Olympus 5V
Receiving the go from Mission Control, Hera lights her Valkyrie engines and pushes onwards to Venus, the first human crew to do so. Her 150 day transfer and smaller crew complement would enable maximum use of the MTV as a science platform.
Hera ditches her first set of Drop Tanks in an eccentric Earth orbit, almost free of the gravity of the planet. These tanks would later be recovered and used on a future MTV, enabling potential full systems reuse in future generations of Transfer Vehicles.
Finally free of the planet, Hera proceeds to Venus, ready to make history with Humanity's expansion into the solar system.
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Thank you so much!!! I'm so grateful to have someone like him on my team he really puts in the work to bring us something spectacular every week. Really looking forward to what's coming.Jay REALLY knows how to get the best angles. Gorgeous as always
Chapter 24: Cytherean Dreaming
Hi everyone, happy Monday! I hope you all had a great week, and are looking forward to another chapter in our story. It's been an exciting time, and we've finally reached the year 2000! We're really making great strides into the unknown, and our human crews are feasting their eyes on sights as yet unseen. I'm really always eternally grateful to have the support of both Jay and Zarbon in these amazing images and mission patches, and we're gonna get some amazing art from some familiar and new faces next week! I absolutely cannot wait to show you, so let's get started and explore!
Chapter 24: Cytherean Dreaming
The new millennium had finally come, and across the global space industry, things were proceeding at a record pace. Odyssey’s expansion into a fully fledged laboratory had been monumental to see, and much of the work being done on station was in support of life on Earth and in space. The crews of the station would often remark at her creature comforts, and delight in the endless myriad of tasks that the station mission planners had for them. Onboard the station, and on the ground, preparations were underway for the debut of a new series of cargo systems: the Boeing Commercial Space Pegasus, based off of their formerly clandestine Transatmospheric Vehicle, and the upcoming Automated Transfer Vehicle, destined to debut on Ariane V in the next few years. Pegasus would be the first of these flights to debut, in its new uncrewed configuration, delivering 8 tons of cargo to the station. Staged from a newly constructed hangar and maintenance center off of the Kennedy Space Center’s Shuttle Landing Facility, the vehicle soared east like something out of a science fiction film, the orbiter slung underneath it. Crowds had gathered from all over the country to view this magnificent beast rise from the runway, soaring into the crisp skies with its two crewmen onboard the carrier aircraft. After launch, there was not much to do except file out, back to their cars, and hope that the long range cameras would provide something good. The carrier aircraft would begin to climb under the power of its jet engines, before its single SSME-150 would ignite, lofting the craft further into the atmosphere on a tail of burning hydrogen. Soon, the SSME 150 of the orbiter would ignite, and the two vehicles would separate, the carrier aircraft performing the parabolic maneuver required to bring it back towards the landing site, while Excalibur powered on to orbit. The vehicle would find itself no longer held by the rigid tensions of the Earth’s atmosphere, and could shut down her engines and she slipped into orbit. Now, the chase towards Odyssey could begin. The first sighting of the craft by the Odyssey crew was about 2 days after launch, as the glint of her payload bay doors reflected sunlight. The vehicle would come to rest at the lower port on Odyssey, and the crew could begin to unpack the large cargo volume carried onboard. As the orbiter departed after two weeks on orbit, the crews on the ground and on Odyssey looked forward to a future in which perhaps 50% of future station resupply was handled by a fleet of winged vehicles. In many ways, Boeing hoped that Pegasus would assist station operations in a manner complimentary to Shuttle, but it would appear that was not quite the case. Pegasus had proved unwieldy to turn around, and even more difficult handling the payload integration. Crews were used to the long lead times of Shuttle, and would struggle in getting systems ready to fly in time. Instead of the 12 hour launch readiness promised by the original TAV concepts, it looked more along the lines of months of lead time. The Carrier Aircraft, Champion, would suffer from notorious teething problems, leading ultimately to the vehicle to be scheduled for flight only twice a year, as a result of necessary downtime to inspect and repair both components of the system after flights. It was, in some ways, a let down for the Odyssey operations crew, and even more so for Boeing Commercial Space. Pegasus would soon be joined in orbit by supplementary American spacecraft, the Orbital Sciences Cygnus was projected to begin flying by 2005 on the upcoming Atlas NG, in support roles for both Odyssey and MTV preparation for Olympus operations.
Venus loomed large in the windows of Hera as she sat in orbit of the planet, taking in the sweeping vistas of this alien world. Her transit had been quick compared to that of a Mars flight, and the crew spent most of their time performing observations of solar phenomenon. The smaller crew had done well on their outbound transit, and orbital insertion around the veiled planet had gone according to plan, separating the first two drop tanks, leaving the remaining two for departure back towards Earth. The planet sat as an eerily featureless orb in their windows, with the occasional aurora and flash of lightning greeting them as they passed to the planet’s night side. Hera’s crew would marvel at the world before them, and at the same time, feel moderately underwhelmed. The atmosphere of Venus would completely obscure their view, but they knew that the surface would not evade them for long. While not as exciting as Olympus 3, the crew would begin to deploy the series of probes meant to examine the origins of the planet and find out if the supporting chemistry for life was there. Venera C1 would be the first probe deployed from Hera, and the crew would watch as the probe streaked through the planet’s atmosphere, its instruments soon revealed after the jettison of the aeroshell and descent to the surface. VISAGE and CLUE would soon follow, streaking into orbit and the atmosphere, setting up a network of monitoring that would enable further discovery for many years to come. As soon as the crew had gotten comfortable in orbit around Venus, the return window for Earth would open and the six person crew would cast off again, expending their second set of drop tanks as they escaped the pull of the veiled planet. For some within the Human Spaceflight Office, the 30 days they had spent at Venus had not been enough, and some argued for a complementary program to Olympus, dedicated to Venus using a concept known only as HAVOC. HAVOC would add a human element to the exploration of the planet, sending crew on a wild ride through the atmosphere in an aeroshell, and exploring the planet in a dirigible. It was considered by many in the scientific community as, arguably, completely and utterly insane. Alas, the focus of human exploration for now would remain firmly on Mars, and as the crew of Olympus 5V returned home, they would once again encounter a world filled with color and vibrance. Now, only Olympus 4 remained in deep space, but it too would soon complete the long journey home before the year was out.
The surface sortie of Olympus 4 had been one of pushing boundaries, and improving on the lessons learned from Olympus 3. Descent had been one of the areas of great improvement, as Commander Teller furiously studied the notes made by Commander Douglass regarding entry descent and landing protocol. The issues during descent had been problematic to say the least, but pre-launch work on the MSAV of Olympus 4 had enabled an even smoother EDL sequence, and soon Teller, Fyodorova, Takeda and Herald would become the second crew to set foot on the planet Mars. The four crew members broke the record set by Olympus 3 on the surface, for a grand total of 47 days, which remains the longest unassisted surface sortie by an MSAV. The crew would assemble their own rover, and scuttle around the dusty plains of Isdis Planitia, searching for clues that could help explain the planet’s past. The American, Russian and Japanese crew members on the landing team would work together to scour their landing site, and sites of interest, for clues about the history of water and microbiology, as well as setting up a surface station. One of the most important observations of the mission was the observation of carbon dioxide frost, collecting along the surfaces of the lander descent stage, gave some indication that seasonal change was in fact in play on the planet’s surface. Mars had active weather, just like the homeworld. The mission team was overjoyed, and already the next wave of experiments to be sent to the planet was under review. Learning from their previous endeavors, the distance from the lander was pushed to 17 miles, allowing the crew to sample previously unknown areas. At the end of their sortie, they returned to Corvus, and would make the climb into orbit to rendezvous with the waiting fleet, eager to begin the long journey home, and be part of something historic. As the crew completed their transit, they reflected on their position as the second human crew on the Martian surface. While it had been a bit of a sting to immediately follow in the footsteps of the first human landing crew, they had done a good deal of work. Their ambitions were record setting, longest independent surface stay, longest traverse, and most scientific experiments deployed by a surface based EVA. To some, it may seem like a fairly innocuous position, a crew no one would remember on a mission that became commonplace, but these were merely the first steps into a much larger world. A foothold for humanity, learning to live and work off the land as they explored the planet. The Journey home was a long one, as was their outbound cruise, but the reception aboard Intrepid in the mid spring would make all of their efforts worth it. Now, as the Earth’s gravity well would once again embrace them, the crew could look forward to future expansion and upgrades to Olympus’ capability.
As part of Olympus operations, mission planners had looked to increase the overall time on Mars’ surface, to enable maximum scientific return. Getting all 8 crew members of an Olympus mission to the surface would also enable some recovery from the punishing effects of microgravity. In order to do this, two steps would have to be taken. The first would be advanced prestaging; like the logistics landers before them, these new modules would enable even greater cargo prepositioning on the surface. They were nearly identical, and derived from the Multi Purpose Logistics Modules that had seen considerable flight time to Odyssey, as well as in preparing the MTVs for departure. These vehicles would also be equipped with a robust entry descent and landing system, building off of the success of the landing and wayfinding technology incorporated on the Zephyr class MSAV. They would be helped to the surface by an aeroshell and landing skycrane, which would then deploy ruggedized wheels to enable docking to the landed and vented descent stage of the MSAV. This new stage would have special ports to allow these modules to plug in, and assist the crew in setting up a permanent base of operations for the 500 days they’d remain on the surface. This would enable the crew of future Olympus missions to remain on the surface for far longer. The second step would be the incorporation of a new upper stage with Jupiter-OPAV, the Boeing built Phaeton. Phaeton would be the key, enabling much larger cargo to be carried to the surface of the Red Planet, drastically improving the performance of the system. Two new orbiters would also be dispatched to join the fleet around the Red Planet, launched onboard Delta IIIs. The Solar Biological System, or SBS 1 and 2, would assist the ASTER program in monitoring solar weather around the planet. However, the mission would not be entirely successful. 4 months into their cruise, SBS 2 would enter a tumble, and lose its ability to point its solar panels at the sun. In a desperate attempt to recontact it, the Deep Space Network would transmit line after line of code, anxious to see the orbiter right itself, but there was no such luck. The probe had been lost to the sifting sands of interplanetary space, consumed by the great darkness. SBS 1 would arrive at Mars and settle into a comfortable elliptical orbit, ready to begin measuring the impact of cosmic and solar winds on the red sands below. Some of the mission scientists back on Earth could not help but wonder if the probe longed for its twin, no doubt slingshotting into heliocentric space by now.
Olympus 6's mission patch, the first mission to leave for Mars in the new millennium. The design language of the patch represented a modern and refreshed take on mission iconography, and was an instant favorite among patch collectors.
The buildup and aggregation period around Olympus 6 would see one of the largest fleets depart for Mars in the entire history of the Olympus program. Some of the first launches in preparation for this mission would be the fueling tankers, lofted by the four Jupiter OPAV vehicles within NASA’s fleet, as well as demoing refueling capabilities from European and Japanese partners, launching smaller but still highly capable vehicles to rendezvous with and fuel the transfer elements and MTV. Olympus 6 would be Minerva’s second flight to the Red Planet, an achievement not even considered during the Apollo-era of Mars planning. The first departure of the window would be the twin Augmentation Landers for Olympus 7, dispatching well ahead of the Olympus 6 fleet in preparation for the planned longer stays on the planet’s surface. These two modules, with their beefed up aeroshells and positioning systems, would depart for Mars, ready to debut their experimental skycrane landing system. The twin modules, nicknamed “Bert” and “Ernie”, would soon be away, and the crew of Olympus 6 would get ready to ride Intrepid into orbit. Commanding this mission would be the UK’s Sharon Kensworth, a veteran of flights to Odyssey and Zarya, and commander of the latter station. She would be the second woman to command an Olympus mission, and the first commander not from the US. Joining her would be MTV Pilot Frederick “Fred” Williams, a NASA astronaut and two time shuttle pilot. The mission’s flight surgeon would be an Olympus 1 veteran, Doctor Yevgeniy Volkov, once again boarding Minerva for a flight into the unknown. The Mission Specialists consisted of a diverse and international crew; Maria Di Firenze of Italy, Dr. Richard Trinh of NASA, Germany’s Vance Detrik, Japan’s Akihiro Matsumoto and Kayla St. John of Australia. After a flawless ascent into orbit, they would soon come to port at Minerva’s forward docking port, and their support crew would help them to load the last of the cargo they required into the fleet leading spacecraft. Their lander, Draco, had just finished fueling operations, and stood ready to bring the great fleet onwards to Mars. As the time for their own departure arrived, Intrepid would undock and return home, wishing the 6th Olympus crew well as they sunk into the atmosphere once again. The CDAs on the Transfer Element, as well as on Minerva would move into place, pushing the final elements of the Martian fleet onwards, ringing in the first year of the new millennium as one of discovery and grand voyages. Soon, when the conclusion of Olympus 6 would come, the age of Flags and Footprints on Mars would end, and the start of permanent operations on the planet would commence, setting up for the future of exploration across the Solar System.
Chapter 24: Cytherean Dreaming
The new millennium had finally come, and across the global space industry, things were proceeding at a record pace. Odyssey’s expansion into a fully fledged laboratory had been monumental to see, and much of the work being done on station was in support of life on Earth and in space. The crews of the station would often remark at her creature comforts, and delight in the endless myriad of tasks that the station mission planners had for them. Onboard the station, and on the ground, preparations were underway for the debut of a new series of cargo systems: the Boeing Commercial Space Pegasus, based off of their formerly clandestine Transatmospheric Vehicle, and the upcoming Automated Transfer Vehicle, destined to debut on Ariane V in the next few years. Pegasus would be the first of these flights to debut, in its new uncrewed configuration, delivering 8 tons of cargo to the station. Staged from a newly constructed hangar and maintenance center off of the Kennedy Space Center’s Shuttle Landing Facility, the vehicle soared east like something out of a science fiction film, the orbiter slung underneath it. Crowds had gathered from all over the country to view this magnificent beast rise from the runway, soaring into the crisp skies with its two crewmen onboard the carrier aircraft. After launch, there was not much to do except file out, back to their cars, and hope that the long range cameras would provide something good. The carrier aircraft would begin to climb under the power of its jet engines, before its single SSME-150 would ignite, lofting the craft further into the atmosphere on a tail of burning hydrogen. Soon, the SSME 150 of the orbiter would ignite, and the two vehicles would separate, the carrier aircraft performing the parabolic maneuver required to bring it back towards the landing site, while Excalibur powered on to orbit. The vehicle would find itself no longer held by the rigid tensions of the Earth’s atmosphere, and could shut down her engines and she slipped into orbit. Now, the chase towards Odyssey could begin. The first sighting of the craft by the Odyssey crew was about 2 days after launch, as the glint of her payload bay doors reflected sunlight. The vehicle would come to rest at the lower port on Odyssey, and the crew could begin to unpack the large cargo volume carried onboard. As the orbiter departed after two weeks on orbit, the crews on the ground and on Odyssey looked forward to a future in which perhaps 50% of future station resupply was handled by a fleet of winged vehicles. In many ways, Boeing hoped that Pegasus would assist station operations in a manner complimentary to Shuttle, but it would appear that was not quite the case. Pegasus had proved unwieldy to turn around, and even more difficult handling the payload integration. Crews were used to the long lead times of Shuttle, and would struggle in getting systems ready to fly in time. Instead of the 12 hour launch readiness promised by the original TAV concepts, it looked more along the lines of months of lead time. The Carrier Aircraft, Champion, would suffer from notorious teething problems, leading ultimately to the vehicle to be scheduled for flight only twice a year, as a result of necessary downtime to inspect and repair both components of the system after flights. It was, in some ways, a let down for the Odyssey operations crew, and even more so for Boeing Commercial Space. Pegasus would soon be joined in orbit by supplementary American spacecraft, the Orbital Sciences Cygnus was projected to begin flying by 2005 on the upcoming Atlas NG, in support roles for both Odyssey and MTV preparation for Olympus operations.
Hera's arrival at Venus, to begin a 30 day "fast stay" to investigate the stranger of Earth's neighbor planets. Her immediate priority upon arrival at Venus would be the deployment of the various sub-probes carried onboard.
Venus loomed large in the windows of Hera as she sat in orbit of the planet, taking in the sweeping vistas of this alien world. Her transit had been quick compared to that of a Mars flight, and the crew spent most of their time performing observations of solar phenomenon. The smaller crew had done well on their outbound transit, and orbital insertion around the veiled planet had gone according to plan, separating the first two drop tanks, leaving the remaining two for departure back towards Earth. The planet sat as an eerily featureless orb in their windows, with the occasional aurora and flash of lightning greeting them as they passed to the planet’s night side. Hera’s crew would marvel at the world before them, and at the same time, feel moderately underwhelmed. The atmosphere of Venus would completely obscure their view, but they knew that the surface would not evade them for long. While not as exciting as Olympus 3, the crew would begin to deploy the series of probes meant to examine the origins of the planet and find out if the supporting chemistry for life was there. Venera C1 would be the first probe deployed from Hera, and the crew would watch as the probe streaked through the planet’s atmosphere, its instruments soon revealed after the jettison of the aeroshell and descent to the surface. VISAGE and CLUE would soon follow, streaking into orbit and the atmosphere, setting up a network of monitoring that would enable further discovery for many years to come. As soon as the crew had gotten comfortable in orbit around Venus, the return window for Earth would open and the six person crew would cast off again, expending their second set of drop tanks as they escaped the pull of the veiled planet. For some within the Human Spaceflight Office, the 30 days they had spent at Venus had not been enough, and some argued for a complementary program to Olympus, dedicated to Venus using a concept known only as HAVOC. HAVOC would add a human element to the exploration of the planet, sending crew on a wild ride through the atmosphere in an aeroshell, and exploring the planet in a dirigible. It was considered by many in the scientific community as, arguably, completely and utterly insane. Alas, the focus of human exploration for now would remain firmly on Mars, and as the crew of Olympus 5V returned home, they would once again encounter a world filled with color and vibrance. Now, only Olympus 4 remained in deep space, but it too would soon complete the long journey home before the year was out.
MSAV "Corvus" prepares to make her descent to the Martian Surface with Commander Teller, Pilot Anastasia Fyodorova and Mission Specialists Takeshi Takeda and Dr. Gabriel Herald, for Olympus 4's rotation on the surface.
The surface sortie of Olympus 4 had been one of pushing boundaries, and improving on the lessons learned from Olympus 3. Descent had been one of the areas of great improvement, as Commander Teller furiously studied the notes made by Commander Douglass regarding entry descent and landing protocol. The issues during descent had been problematic to say the least, but pre-launch work on the MSAV of Olympus 4 had enabled an even smoother EDL sequence, and soon Teller, Fyodorova, Takeda and Herald would become the second crew to set foot on the planet Mars. The four crew members broke the record set by Olympus 3 on the surface, for a grand total of 47 days, which remains the longest unassisted surface sortie by an MSAV. The crew would assemble their own rover, and scuttle around the dusty plains of Isdis Planitia, searching for clues that could help explain the planet’s past. The American, Russian and Japanese crew members on the landing team would work together to scour their landing site, and sites of interest, for clues about the history of water and microbiology, as well as setting up a surface station. One of the most important observations of the mission was the observation of carbon dioxide frost, collecting along the surfaces of the lander descent stage, gave some indication that seasonal change was in fact in play on the planet’s surface. Mars had active weather, just like the homeworld. The mission team was overjoyed, and already the next wave of experiments to be sent to the planet was under review. Learning from their previous endeavors, the distance from the lander was pushed to 17 miles, allowing the crew to sample previously unknown areas. At the end of their sortie, they returned to Corvus, and would make the climb into orbit to rendezvous with the waiting fleet, eager to begin the long journey home, and be part of something historic. As the crew completed their transit, they reflected on their position as the second human crew on the Martian surface. While it had been a bit of a sting to immediately follow in the footsteps of the first human landing crew, they had done a good deal of work. Their ambitions were record setting, longest independent surface stay, longest traverse, and most scientific experiments deployed by a surface based EVA. To some, it may seem like a fairly innocuous position, a crew no one would remember on a mission that became commonplace, but these were merely the first steps into a much larger world. A foothold for humanity, learning to live and work off the land as they explored the planet. The Journey home was a long one, as was their outbound cruise, but the reception aboard Intrepid in the mid spring would make all of their efforts worth it. Now, as the Earth’s gravity well would once again embrace them, the crew could look forward to future expansion and upgrades to Olympus’ capability.
As part of Olympus operations, mission planners had looked to increase the overall time on Mars’ surface, to enable maximum scientific return. Getting all 8 crew members of an Olympus mission to the surface would also enable some recovery from the punishing effects of microgravity. In order to do this, two steps would have to be taken. The first would be advanced prestaging; like the logistics landers before them, these new modules would enable even greater cargo prepositioning on the surface. They were nearly identical, and derived from the Multi Purpose Logistics Modules that had seen considerable flight time to Odyssey, as well as in preparing the MTVs for departure. These vehicles would also be equipped with a robust entry descent and landing system, building off of the success of the landing and wayfinding technology incorporated on the Zephyr class MSAV. They would be helped to the surface by an aeroshell and landing skycrane, which would then deploy ruggedized wheels to enable docking to the landed and vented descent stage of the MSAV. This new stage would have special ports to allow these modules to plug in, and assist the crew in setting up a permanent base of operations for the 500 days they’d remain on the surface. This would enable the crew of future Olympus missions to remain on the surface for far longer. The second step would be the incorporation of a new upper stage with Jupiter-OPAV, the Boeing built Phaeton. Phaeton would be the key, enabling much larger cargo to be carried to the surface of the Red Planet, drastically improving the performance of the system. Two new orbiters would also be dispatched to join the fleet around the Red Planet, launched onboard Delta IIIs. The Solar Biological System, or SBS 1 and 2, would assist the ASTER program in monitoring solar weather around the planet. However, the mission would not be entirely successful. 4 months into their cruise, SBS 2 would enter a tumble, and lose its ability to point its solar panels at the sun. In a desperate attempt to recontact it, the Deep Space Network would transmit line after line of code, anxious to see the orbiter right itself, but there was no such luck. The probe had been lost to the sifting sands of interplanetary space, consumed by the great darkness. SBS 1 would arrive at Mars and settle into a comfortable elliptical orbit, ready to begin measuring the impact of cosmic and solar winds on the red sands below. Some of the mission scientists back on Earth could not help but wonder if the probe longed for its twin, no doubt slingshotting into heliocentric space by now.
Olympus 6's mission patch, the first mission to leave for Mars in the new millennium. The design language of the patch represented a modern and refreshed take on mission iconography, and was an instant favorite among patch collectors.
The buildup and aggregation period around Olympus 6 would see one of the largest fleets depart for Mars in the entire history of the Olympus program. Some of the first launches in preparation for this mission would be the fueling tankers, lofted by the four Jupiter OPAV vehicles within NASA’s fleet, as well as demoing refueling capabilities from European and Japanese partners, launching smaller but still highly capable vehicles to rendezvous with and fuel the transfer elements and MTV. Olympus 6 would be Minerva’s second flight to the Red Planet, an achievement not even considered during the Apollo-era of Mars planning. The first departure of the window would be the twin Augmentation Landers for Olympus 7, dispatching well ahead of the Olympus 6 fleet in preparation for the planned longer stays on the planet’s surface. These two modules, with their beefed up aeroshells and positioning systems, would depart for Mars, ready to debut their experimental skycrane landing system. The twin modules, nicknamed “Bert” and “Ernie”, would soon be away, and the crew of Olympus 6 would get ready to ride Intrepid into orbit. Commanding this mission would be the UK’s Sharon Kensworth, a veteran of flights to Odyssey and Zarya, and commander of the latter station. She would be the second woman to command an Olympus mission, and the first commander not from the US. Joining her would be MTV Pilot Frederick “Fred” Williams, a NASA astronaut and two time shuttle pilot. The mission’s flight surgeon would be an Olympus 1 veteran, Doctor Yevgeniy Volkov, once again boarding Minerva for a flight into the unknown. The Mission Specialists consisted of a diverse and international crew; Maria Di Firenze of Italy, Dr. Richard Trinh of NASA, Germany’s Vance Detrik, Japan’s Akihiro Matsumoto and Kayla St. John of Australia. After a flawless ascent into orbit, they would soon come to port at Minerva’s forward docking port, and their support crew would help them to load the last of the cargo they required into the fleet leading spacecraft. Their lander, Draco, had just finished fueling operations, and stood ready to bring the great fleet onwards to Mars. As the time for their own departure arrived, Intrepid would undock and return home, wishing the 6th Olympus crew well as they sunk into the atmosphere once again. The CDAs on the Transfer Element, as well as on Minerva would move into place, pushing the final elements of the Martian fleet onwards, ringing in the first year of the new millennium as one of discovery and grand voyages. Soon, when the conclusion of Olympus 6 would come, the age of Flags and Footprints on Mars would end, and the start of permanent operations on the planet would commence, setting up for the future of exploration across the Solar System.
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So good to see the story following through on the many threads you’ve been curating. TAV is always a welcome presence even as she suffers teething issues, and it really feels like the Olympus missions are hitting their stride. Super interested in all the new vehicles and systems debuting in the near future
Yep! Due to high radiation levels as a result of being in deep space, astronauts who fly on an Olympus rotation to Mars are most likely not going to fly again, but perhaps systems in the future could be improved to mitigate that risk even further.
These new vehicles will certainly leave their legacy on the program as a whole!So good to see the story following through on the many threads you’ve been curating. TAV is always a welcome presence even as she suffers teething issues, and it really feels like the Olympus missions are hitting their stride. Super interested in all the new vehicles and systems debuting in the near future