Stellarium (Origins): A Space-Time Adventure to the Ends of our Universe by Fabricio Simoes Read Free Book Online Page B

the first month of
waiting was bleak. After three months, few believed the astronauts to still be
alive. After six months, NASA publicly confirmed the Stellarium-12 mission had
failed. The crew never returned, and their deaths were made official. America
gained three new dead heroes.
    In that same announcement, under
intense pressure from society and the U.S. Congress, NASA confirmed the
Stellarium space program would be suspended. Researchers began conducting new
studies about how to send humans through wormholes in a safer way. A cohort of
scientists tried to develop theories about what might have gone wrong, so
society could at least understand their fate.
    Five years later, with little
support from the government and discredited by public opinion, the Stellarium
Space Program is definitely closed and forgotten. The entire team is relocated;
the equipment taken apart; the documents archived. NASA returns to its plans
for missions to Mars. A strong sense of failure and regret is felt throughout
the agency.
    And, so, the world moved on.

 

    Image 07 – Capsule of NASA’s Orion spacecraft.
    (credits and details on the final page)

Chapter 8
    The Orion-II had only been in
Draco for a few hours. Inside, a nervous crew worked frantically.
    “Can we turn the telescope back
on? Is there any way to set it up so that it will scan the area every half
hour?” Russell suggested to Allison.
    “I’m already scanning every
fifteen minutes. There isn’t anything visible to the naked eye, either, but the
probe captured images of it, so it must be on the other side.”
    “How long does this planet’s
orbit take?” asked Russell.
    “I’m not exactly sure, but from
the few images we’ve received, we calculated that a complete orbit could last
about one thousand days on Earth,” responded Allison.
    “So, if the planet Sater really
is on the other side, the mission is over. We have no way of getting the probe
to the other side of Valkiria. There’s no way for us to steer it there
remotely. We would lose all communication as soon as it eclipsed behind the
star,” Russell concluded.
    “And we don’t have any way of
getting to the other side, do we, Allison?” asked Frank.
    “It’s too risky. If we were to
start moving around in space, we would have a hard time opening up the wormhole
to return home. We would have no way of guaranteeing that our location in space
at any given time would take as back to where we came from. The only thing we
know for certain is that, when we left from the jump point, the wormhole
brought us to this exact spot. If we activate the wormhole from here, it will
take us back there. But, if we leave here and try to make it around Valkiria,
we’ll really be risking it. We might never find our way back to our solar
system,” Allison explained.
    “Okay, we’ve been looking for
this planet for seven hours now. We can wait for two more hours, and if we
haven’t found it by then, we should abort the mission and return,” suggested
Russell, and everyone agreed.
    At that moment, Allison began to
work with the telescope data and the images captured by the cameras. Frank
checked the status of the systems and regulated the temperature inside the
ship. Russell visually mapped everything he could see through the front window.
    “It’s a little hard to see
because of how dark it is, but there’s something in that direction. It might be
too small to be a planet,” said the commander.
    “Yes, those are asteroids. I saw
them in the telescope images a few hours ago. They appear to be orbiting
Valkiria. If you look up a bit, you can see that there are several of them,
which form a belt,” explained Allison.
    “That’s amazing...” said Russell,
as Frank tried to look out the same window.
    It was a very long belt. There
were hundreds of asteroids of all sizes. They were all very close together, but
at a safe distance from the ship.
    Finally, the two hours of waiting
came to an end. They all started getting