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!