The threats from the Chinese team do not stop, but at this point they are empty. A group of them did try to kidnap one of our rovers as some sort of ransom attempt but Lee saw it coming from his drone surveillance and drove the rover well out of danger, baiting them an entire mile out in the process.
Fortunately, it seems like they made it back to their camp safe. It would have made me feel guilty for laughing at the clip where they chased down the rover like a group of hunters chasing a mammoth if they had not made it back alive. Still, it makes me wonder how desperate they truly are.
In other news NASA has given us the go ahead with the mission. Tomorrow we will be conducting our first dive at drill site two. I am beyond terrified, but I'm incredibly excited for this dive as well. It will be the most dangerous part of this mission so far, but it will also provide the greatest opportunity to find life beneath the ice.
Just in case something goes wrong I have written a letter home to my father and son in the spirit Adams had while he was caught in the chasm. I don't want to think about this dive going wrong, but it is important to be prepared.
Me and Commander Hunt will be onboarding the submarine while Horvat and Lee will be lowering us into the water and watching from above the ice. The most dangerous part of this mission will be lowering the submarine into the ice.
Lowering a submarine into the water on Earth is pretty simple. You take it on a boat to the desired location and lower it into the depths. With the ocean of Europa being slightly over two miles under the icy crust, actually deploying the submarine is an incredibly risky task. In fact, the method we were using had never been officially tested to work in the conditions we were exposed to.
It sounded simple, but in practice it was anything but straightforward. So that we would be able to go inside without our space suits there was a staging area within one of the camp bubbles. Once we were inside the submarine it would pressurize, allowing us up to one hundred hours of oxygen from that point forward. It would then be maneuvered to the drill site by the portion of the crew that was above ground and attached to a cable. The remaining crew outside the submarine would then supervise the process of lowering the submarine down using the cable, keeping it straight throughout the descent to avoid contact with the icy walls of the hole.
Once the submarine touched down with the water it would detach from the cable and be free for us to control within the submarine. At the end of the mission, we would have to lock back in with the cable using a mechanism on the rear of the submarine for Horvat and Lee to run the accent process.
Throughout the entire process we would be able to communicate with Horvat and Lee through the communicator, where they could help guide us back on course from above or provide time updates.
About ten hours of our oxygen would be used during the process of raising and lowering the submarine from the water. It was important for the process to be slow to avoid damaging the submarine.
So much can go wrong. Just thinking about the process makes me anxious. However, if we discover life down there it will be worth it.
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Europa
Ficțiune științifico-fantasticăIn order to embark on a mission to discover alien life on the icy moon of Jupiter Maria must leave her life on Earth behind, including her father and her seven-year-old son Diego. She thought the hardest part of the mission would be saying goodbye...
