This story is inspired by the 1985 film, Life Force
Each character in this story is at least 19 years of age.
LIVE NEWS REPORT:
Reporter: Ms. Aish Kapoor is once again making history. Ms. Kapoor, an astronaut for both NASA and ISRO and was both the most highly decorated pilot and most celebrated astronaut in India's 51-year-old space program.
Now in charge of her own space agency, her career culminates today, in the landing on Mars of the first all-female crew and the first humans to land on a foreign planetary body. Named after the fictional island, home to Diana Prince, aka Wonder Woman; The Themyscira spacecraft will orbit the red planet, its shuttle, The Mar-Vell, named after Captain Marvel, will land along the Martian equator. The landing site is near the Valles Marineris, one of the largest canyons in our solar system.
The canyon is ten times larger than the Grand Canyon in the United States. It is believed to have been carved out in just weeks when an ice dam broke and all the water behind it rushed in, carving the canyon.
The multinational crew of 10 women will touchdown at 14:15 PM PST, 11:56 AM Martian time, following the seven-month journey. Launched during the COVID-19 pandemic in August 2020 from an island leased from the Philippine government, today their journey is one-third of the way over.
There will be a 20-minute time differential in voice confirmation from Captain Mira Shandilya to Mission Control on the unnamed island in the Philippines.
Additional nations represented on this, the greatest journey mankind has ever embarked on, include Mexico, Australia, Egypt, Chile, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe, Norway, and an amazing nineteen-year-old math prodigy who escaped from North Korea.
Notably left out of the crew selection were the Japanese, Russians, Americans, and Britons. Ms. Kapoor continues to refuse to comment on why this was.
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"Lights out! Hit the bed. Big day in a few hours!" yelled Captain Shandilya with much enthusiasm.
Each member of the crew stood up, said their respective goodnights, and went to their quarters. Captain Shandilya grabbed the remote, turned off the telecommunications monitor, and walked down to her quarters as well.
The next day at precisely 10:47 AM the retrorockets fired. The excitement grew in all the crew members. The Themyscira was so close to Mars there were no stars visible through the portholes on the starboard side of the ship.
Nothing but the closeup, orange, and brown surface of the Martian landscape. They were too close in orbit around the planet for a starry background to appear.
They felt the ship rotate and position itself for disengaging of the shuttle from the main section. It was getting very close to TIG (time of ignition), for the orbital maneuvering engines to engage. Separation was imminent.
All the women helped one another with their spacesuits and securing helmets and seat belts.
Chief Navigator Bonita Colon and Quan Woo, the mathematician, were busy manually checking the onboard computer's surface landing calculations with their own calculations.
According to incoming data, wind speeds in the high atmosphere were faster than previous calculations had shown so they needed to input new calculations. The Mar-Vell, separated.
Almost two hours later, Shuttle Mar-Vell and all the crew had landed safely.
The landing was nearly perfect, only a few meters from the designated landing position. The crew knew that the champagne would be flowing in the control room back on Earth within the next 20 minutes, but they started their celebration now! At the current distance Mars is from the Earth it would take verbal confirmation on the successful landing approximately 20 minutes to reach Earth.
Seat belts were being unbuckled, the cabin was being depressurized and helmets were coming off! After such a long and stressful trip... mission accomplished!
At least the first third of the mission. Captain Mira was the first to walk around and congratulate everyone. She then breathed a long sigh of relief. The ship and all its crew had made it safely.
There was no time to rest though. The workload had really just begun. Data collection, science experiments, soil, and crew analysis were first on their agenda. Captain Mira was getting ready to be the first human, nay, the first woman to walk on the surface of an extraterrestrial planet. And it would be televised live (minus a 20-minute delay) to the eight billion people back home.
History was scheduled to be made again in just under 17 hours. That would officially be the start of their 69-day terrestrial mission before taking off on their second seven-month journey, returning home. After spending close to 48 hours doing calculations, final approach, and systems checks, everyone wanted and needed a shower.
Captain Mira, usually the last to shower and get whatever water remained, was finally the first showering today. She and her second in command, Nidhi Mandapati, a fellow Indian from Australia, would be the first two outside in the Mars atmosphere. One after the other, touching Martian soil, so they would be first today to shower.
Shandilya finished her shower and came out patting her hair dry. She told Mandapati that it was the longest shower she has taken since leaving the base on the Moon.
Mandapati had her back to the captain. The captain gazed at her second in command as she finished undressing and walked into the shower. Naked, and for the first time the captain noticed she had vitiligo but only on her ass and back.
She found her complexion to be very beautiful. She was several shades of brown and like a bouquet of flowers, was very attractive.
Both now showered and dressed, the time had finally come. There were sixteen steps down from the airlock to the bottom rung of the ladder. The captain and first officer, with flags in hand, were about to open the airlock and step out and onto Martian soil.
Approximately 8 billion fellow humans were about to watch her step onto Mars and plant the flag of the United Nations. Since the Consortium for Learning & Interplanetary Travel is not represented by any single nation, Kapoor thought it best to do it that way and then First Officer Mandapati will plant the CLIT flag right next to it.
Shandilya jumped from the bottom rung and became the first woman on Mars. It was truly a momentous occasion. Soon after, Mandapati jumped too! She planted the flag right next to the UN flag and they posed for all of Earth to see.
Both women were thinking to themselves about how envious world leaders must be. How jealous all the countless male astronauts must feel and how embarrassed Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson will be in about 14 minutes.
They high-fived one another once more and walked farther away from the ship, kicking up rusty soil and dirtying their pristine white spacesuits. With big bright smiles on their faces, they began to explore Mars. Soon all of the astronauts had their day in the sun by setting foot on Mars.