Dead on Mars

Chapter 58 - Sol Five, The Arm
The United Space Station was at a height of 300 kilometers.

The Eagle was still 2,033 kilometers from the grappling point.

“Miss Mai Dong! Your vital stats appear abnormal! Can you still hold on?” Tomcat looked at the computer’s warning. A few of Mai Dong’s vital stats were approaching their limits, such as her accelerating heartbeat and rising blood pressure.

“It’s… fine… Mr. Cat, I’m… fine…”

Mai Dong replied. She opened her eyes slightly, but her eyeballs were flushed red with blood as her vision was darkened.

The Orion was still shaking violently like a boat thrashing in a storm. A loud creaking sound was coming from somewhere, and it sounded like a particular structure was suffering immense torsional forces as it let out a moan before it buckled.

Through the window, one could see Mars’s brownish-red surface. The rising sun illuminated everything as mountain valleys, thousands of meters long, appeared like thin, faint lines. The magnificent world was rushing at her that very moment, something Mai Dong enjoyed very much.

Witnessing this unimaginable scene seemed to make her soul undergo sublimation.

But she found it difficult to even open her eyes. The intense vibrations made her organs churn. Mai Dong didn’t know how long this state would last, and she felt that she would die sooner or later if this continued.

Mai Dong, hold on! Hold on!

She told herself silently.

2,000 kilometers away.

The Eagle was tumbling along its orbit without any net forces acting on it.

The lander’s buggy computer didn’t seem to know how much trouble it had stirred as it continued receiving the data from its various sensors. Then, it would send it out through the antenna. Even though the Eagle had lost control of its attitude, the computer still believed that it was flying normally—a result of Tomcat shutting down its stabilizer rockets.

Tomcat completely cut the Eagle computer’s control over its rockets for it didn’t wish the buggy computer to touch them again. The Eagle had less than 20% of its propellants left, and they were critical for the grappling. If the computer went nuts again and turned on the engine for no good reason, the propellants would be expended, putting an end to their endeavor.

There wasn’t any time for a contingent inspection or fixing the bug in the program; therefore, Tomcat decided to just neuter the computer system.

Ten minutes left.

“Initiate RD-0172 engine. Commencing attitude adjustment!”

Tomcat’s command was issued from Kunlun Station, sending the signal from a relay satellite to the lander. The rocket engines were initiated as high-speed exhaust exerted a backward force from the direction in which the Eagle was tumbling forward. Coupled with the gyroscope, the lander’s tumbling speed was gradually lowered.

It was the last propellants the RD-0172 had, and every bit used meant every bit less.

Tomcat stared at the lander’s solid line trajectory and the predicted path gradually overlap as the status of the propellant, depicted on the screen, kept dropping. It went from 19% to 16%, and from 16% to 14% in the next update. Soon, it entered a red warning zone as Tomcat broke out into a sweat figuratively.

“CONSISTENT PATH!”

Tomcat hurriedly shut down the engine when the red window blinked! It was time to change direction!

“Decelerate!” Tomcat roared. The space station was at a height of 290 kilometers, and the Eagle was still 507 kilometers from the grappling point!

The Eagle and the space station’s relative speed was as high as 20 m/s. Tomcat had to reduce the speed, and initiate the RD-0172 one final time. This Russian rocket had finally come to the end of its life after all the meritorious services it had rendered. This veteran had shot out its final bullet, expending the last fuel in its reservoir with a mighty boom to give the Eagle that negative thrust!

“Comrade RD-0172, Hurrah—!” Tomcat roared. “Stop it for me!”

The Eagle’s relative speed rapidly dropped.

The numbers were refreshed as the computer produced the trajectory prediction of the Eagle and the space station.

The lander’s trajectory was indicated in blue, while the space station’s trajectory was indicated in red.

The two lines perfectly intersected in the middle of the screen. At the point of intersection, the Eagle’s estimated height would be 284,633 meters, while the United Space Station was estimated to be 284,696 meters.

There was a gap of 63 meters—the United Space Station was 63 meters higher than the lander.

That also meant that the Eagle would sweep past beneath the space station’s feet, and the two would brush shoulders.

“Short of 63 meters?” Mai Dong was alarmed. “Can the space station’s height be lowered again?”

“No, it’s already too late to micro-adjust the space station. Rashly lowering its height might cause the lander to slam right into the space station. The Eagle has already expended all of its propellants. We can’t control it.” Tomcat shook its head. “However, this difference was within our expectations.”

“Then, what do we do now?” the girl asked. “Isn’t it short of over sixty meters? How will the docking work?”

“We aren’t docking!” Tomcat answered.

“We aren’t docking?” Mai Dong was stunned.

“Yes, we have never said that we were going to dock. The lander is uncontrollable, and the relative speed is too high, so a docking will definitely fail,” Tomcat said. “We are going to grapple it!”

“Grapple? How?” Mai Dong was a blank. She didn’t know what it meant.

Tang Yue’s voice sounded in the comms, as he said with Tomcat in unison, “The arm!”

…

The arm.

The official name was the Mars Space Station Remote Manipulator System (MSSRMS). It had also been called Canadarm70. This was the longest and biggest robotic arm built in human history. Its senior was the decorated Canadarm2, a robotic arm contributed by Canada for the old International Space Station.

However, the robotic arm installed on the ISS was 19 meters long, while the Mars United Space Station’s arm was 70 meters long!

The United Space Station had many robotic arms, but this was the most striking one. It was built by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), and it was mainly built of an aluminum and epoxy composite. It had twelve degrees of freedom and was very light and agile. It was installed in the middle of the frame where it was stablest and sturdiest. The platform at the end of the arm could carry a few astronauts for them to carry out maintenance and repairs on the space station or spacecraft.

It was made so long because the Orion spacecraft were massive. If the robotic arm was too short, it wasn’t able to grapple it, making it inconvenient for the maintenance.

The CSA had once argued with NASA.

CSA: Seventy meters!? Seventy meters!? Do you know what seventy meters are? I’m telling you, even if I were to jump out of this window and die outside, I wouldn’t be foolish enough to build something like that!

NASA: You aren’t doing it? We’ll just source it to the CNSA then.

CSA: We’ll do it.

Mai Dong turned her head in a daze as she looked out of the window. She could see the white gigantic robotic arm slowly opening. Its joints and axle bearings were spinning and locking on before slowly leaving the frame. Only then did she realize what Tang Yue and Tomcat were attempting.