Final preparations
Bill sighed as he entered the airlock. How many eva’s had he made? He had lost track. As he exited the hatch he checked his chronograph. Day 331 of the mission, that would make it the 44 of Minmydon in the 4th year. Man time had sure flown. He started disassembling the supply craft and moved the full containers to the Baele. There were so many supplies left and the alignment of the return trajectory was not ideal. Close to Eve they detached the craft that would burn up in the atmosphere and prepared for the breaking burn.
Capture!
“Wow, she’s beautiful,” Valentina said as she snapped some pictures. Bob nodded,
“I wonder if we will ever develop the technology to land there.” He said. “Ha, said Bob, it’s rather a question of when,” Bill replied. “Brace yourself.” and he flipped the switch to start the capture burn. The long time in zero-G had not done them well and they groaned as the pressure pushed them in their seats. The Beale 01 entered an elliptical 2-day orbit that would intersect with Gilly after 3 orbits.
Just before periapsis they released their Snuf rover on a free return trajectory and moved out of its way. After a small burn, they entered low Gilly orbit. “Wow, gravity is so low here, I bet I could jump down there,” Valentina said. Bill smiled, “Well you may get your chance getting back up here.”
Feet on solid ground.
Bob and Valentina descended the next day in the Delta command craft, named “Space Cat” for some reason. There was not much science equipment on the craft so they planted a flag and gathered some samples. “There’s gravioli radiation here somewhere,” Bob said. “Just not here.” After a rather short EVA (they wanted to keep the mothership more or less in the same inclination) they started the return sequence.
Rendez-vous never took so little fuel and never this many attempts too. Closing the distance proved very hard and a small correction would lead to overshoot. In the end, Valentina disabled the engine and used RCS to get close. Great to be home, let’s do some science!
Snuf’s fiery descent
Meanwhile, their probe had returned to Eve and started the descent. The shield burned through the ablator and the whole system started to heat up, but nothing exploded, which was a good sign! As the sun rose, the little probe had descended through most of the atmosphere and the parachute deployed.
The craft landed softly and the tiny computer came to life. Since it had no direct link with KSC, low power and no antenna deployed it switched to automatic science gathering. That is when its acceleration sensor noticed something odd.
The gear seemed to be broken and the whole craft started to slide down the hill, picking up quite a bit of speed. It’s SAS systems refused to engage and so the little probe was literally snowballing down the hill towards the explodium sea. Without a great splash, it landed and started to sink.
At that moment the Baele 01 came into range and the relay started to work. Without hesitation the tiny rover deployed its antenna and started relaying the science, depleting its battery that was keeping the solar panels above water. Scientists at KSC marveled at the data but were heartbroken when they decoded the last bit of data before the transmission had seized. It read: “The fluid is pulling me down, I am cold and my power is gone.”
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