CHAPTER - 05 - CRATER CAVE & THE OVAL ROCK

The craterwas a gentle slope and there were few rock formations - the trio reach the fuel pod - pick it up - when Priyanka points the rock formation that's in the shape of the cave.

The trio venture one behind other to explore the cave. They send out mini rovers to identify potential threats inside the cave. The mini rovers move into the cave.

Maddy receives information from mini rovers on the presence of good level of oxygen inside the cave and no movements or presence of life inside the cave.

The trio now venture into the cave with their flashlights on. 

Maddy leads the team followed by Priyanka and Prithvi. The three of them explore the cave and they spot a peculiar rock formation in the form of oval egg like shape. Maddy uses an ultra sound to check if it is composed of carbon matter and the test proves negative.

The rock formation seems to be made of silicon and sulphur and traces of unknown minerals inside it. Maddy pick up 1 sample for further testing at the green house. Maddy goes in front along with Priyanka, while Prithvi curious, picks up a smaller egg rock and covers it in a box and places it inside his backpack and walks casually. He doesn't mention this to others.

They again walk back to the rover, picking up the mini rover and start again towards the sister pods.

After about an hour ride, they reach the other side of the crater- they see the sister pods landed safely with their parachutes opened correctly.

They use the parachute to construct the ventilation and greenhouse chambers and fix 2 sister pods.

The sun starts setting and darkness begins to fall - the trio get back inside the sister pod to sleep in the sleeping chambers.

The rock samples are left in the other sister pod. 
That night, the rock sample begins to ooze out a green liquid which flows down and slims towards the tuck of the greenhouse near a box kept in a corner. The camera monitoring the activity in the room is not working due to the effects of Solar storm.

The rock regains shape back and stands as it is.

The day breaks and the three of them get up - they prepare the breakfast and joke on their past. Maddy speaks good about his wife and daughter and his parents and his happy family.

Prithvi jokes about his collage days and tries to woo Priyanka with some jokes.

Priyanka speaks about her struggles as an independent working woman and her boxing career. She tells how she had to let go of her boyfriend to pursue her Astronaut dream.

They connect to the mother ship - and are greeted good morning by Chitti.

Arjunan is seen in the background brushing his teeth and checking the vital stats of the mother ship. Chitti jokes about by making mimicry of Amithabh Bachchan, SRK, Rajini Kanth and Sivaji Ganesan.

The three ground crew then check the vital stats of the greenhouse and other pods and then get on their suits and go out to fix the remaining 2 pods.

The 4 pods together forms a 1000 sq. feet laboratory with all the gadgets needed for testing rock samples and any carbon life forms if present.

To be continued...

CHAPTER - 04 - INDIA PLANTS ITS FLAG - EXPEDITION BEGINS

Maddy checks with the crew status both in the rocket pod as well as with the crew in mothership. 
With all things fine, Maddy checks the coordinates with the Mother ship's arial view - they find that they are close to 50 km away from their targetted landing site.
The greenhouse pods have landed some 3 km away from the landing site on the other side of the crater and the the rocket pod has landed near the edje of the 'Saagar' site - in diagonally opposite crater edge from the sister pod. 

The crew have to reach with the rocket pod to the landing spot to lodge back to the mothership when it takes off from Mars. 


But Maddy finds that one of the fuel pod had been lost in the sand storm and is swept away 10 km into the cretor from where they are.
They decide to take to rover in that direction, pick up the fuel pod and take the route through the cater to shave off 30 km to reach the sister pod on the other side of 
the crater.
If all things go as planned, they should be in the exact spot in another day, to set up the 4 green houses.
Once in there, they will be living inside the greenhouse for 7 days - repair the rocket pod and prepare to for lauching to get back to the mother ship when it flies back to dock the rocket capsule. 
Maddy decides to take along Prithvi, for the search and retreival of the fuel pod. But Priyanka insists she will also accompany them. Maddy agrees after some thinking.
All three prepare to land on the Martian surface. Maddy lands first followed by Prithvi and then finally by Priyanka. 
All three declare the place in the name of Humanity and plant the Indian national flag. 

The National Anthem plays in the background. Meanwhile in the mothership, the relay is recorded to be sent as signal to earth. It will take another 3 days for the signal to be telecasted to earth due to the disturbances due to the solar storm.
Zooming back to Mars, Maddy & Prithvi bring out the Mars rover vehicle parts to be assembled to the rocket pod to toe it to the sister pod. 

Priyanka, prepares the medical kit and also the sampling kits to pick up any samples. The gents assemble the parts and all three of them start in the rover to fetch the 
fuel pod in the way and reach the sister pods. They head down slowly into the crater to pick the fuel pod.

CHAPTER - 03 - MY3 MARS EXPEDITION

In earth, two leading Indian Corporate gaints, Alliance Retail & Crobaxy pharmacuticals make a tie up recently. 
They are interested in exploring a venture to invest in ISRO's proposed manned mission MY3 along with the expertiese from Defense Research & Development Organization DRDO.
According to the plan, ISRO's manned mission will be provided with trained astronauts from DRDO. 
The project will be funded majorly by the corporate tie up.
DRDO sends out the best of the crew with them, Madhavan, known as Maddy - The captain, who is a decorated war hero. It is decided that he leads the mission.

Maddy's team will have 3 others, another trained astronauts from Maddy's battalion, Prithviraj 

and 2 scientists from DRDO specially trained for the Mars mission, 
one, is the award winning scientist with a good sense of humor, Arjunan - who had worked previously on the Indian Rocket research with ex-president Dr. Abdul Kalam 

and another, a military doctor deputed in siachen, Priyanka. Priyanka is also a boxer and has won gold medal in olympics representing India.

The 4 member team is assisted by a robot - Chitti - who is the first of his kind of z-series robots. Chitti won the best Robot in international Robot Conference and is entrusted the mother ship maintenance as well as safety & guidance of the crew.

The team head off for the year long journey to Mars and in the way - will be orbitting close to Venus and then sling shot into orbit to reach Mars.

The plan is to launch a sister pod with the rocket pod. The sister pod will be an inflatable green house comfortable enough for 4 people to stay inside.
The rocket pod has the crew inside them with fuel pods attached. 
The plan is to drop at Area 15 - closer to 'Saagar' site - where, the crew will set up their green houses and also prepare the rocket pod to launch from Mars and dock back to the mothership.

On reaching Mars, Arjunan and Chitti will be on Mothership guiding the other 3 members of the team, who will be going on a rocket capsule into the Martian surface.
The plan works perfect till they reach the Martian orbit, then catastrophy strikes. 
While the rocket capsule is dislodged from the mother ship and makes its way into the Martian surface, a huge dust storm along with a solar flare, makes it difficult for the team's Martian landing. The sister pod with greenhouse gets dislodged at the right place, but the rocket pod gets swifted by the wind away from the landing spot.

The Solar flare sends out the Mother ship's circuits into disarray - this causes the Mother ship unable to help the rocket capsule landing.
Maddy, as the captain, regains control of the rocket capsule and safely manuvers the rocket into a rough landing escaping crash and landing near a crater.

The crew regain control after 12 hours of rewiring the circuits. 
Meanwhile the mothership is being repaired by Chitti and the mother ship has already started scanning for the rocket pod and found them and started beaming signals.

CHAPTER - 02 - STORY SO FAR

Martian expedition

Story so far -  The Indian Mangalyaan 1 was a success - but after three years of its time, it made a hard landing.
This was followed by Mangalyaan 2 - which was a rover and landed successfully - searched and retrieved the Mangalyaan 1 satellite - its spare battery was reused.
Mangalyaan 2 - rovered around the Martian surface and found several interesting places. During one such expedition - it arrived at a large mountain near a crater.
Scientist analyzed the mother ship sattelite's photo images and identified dried river beds in that area. There was also supposed volcanic activities near by.
Mangalyaan 2 identified movements - which were later dismissed as being only seismic activity near the mountain area.
MY2 - encountered a sandstorm and hence had to abort the mission of going around the hill and instead made an emergency decision to seek shelter in a cave like
formation near the mouth of the dried river bed.
Inside the cave, MY2 switched its flash lights and started exploring the cave structure. When suddenly, it found a green moss like formation.
MY2 - analzed a sample of the moss like formation and the chemical testing was underway, when another seismic activity made a huge rock fall on top of the MY2 robot,
disabling it - with only the memory circuit - still running the test and beaming out the result.
The last of such beaming to earth made an astounding discovery of 'Unobtainium' - a rare organic compound - theorized to be a huge hit in both the pharma market.
Both the Indian Military as well as the leading pharma corporations make a deal and send out a rescue and research mission to Mars in MY3.

CHAPTER -01 - MANGALYAAN - 2 FLYIES TO MARS

The story unfolds with India planning to send in a rover mission to Mars following Mangalyaan 1's success. Mangalyaan-1 circled Mars 3 times and covered most of the areas and sent back some baffling pictures.

Of interest is a huge white colour powder lake and a rock formation which has many cave like formation. Oxygen levels have been shown to be high in those areas.

Mangalyaan-1 flew close to the area lastly and sent out the last signal before it stopped sending data. But its inbuilt signaling system still works and sends in a beep every 3 seconds on its position. The area was christened as 'sagar15' the number indicating the year.

Meanwhile, on earth, the Indian Space Program Agency (ISPA) and Chinese Extra Terrestial Research Agency (CETRA) are in a race to send in manned space mission to Mars. 



India wants to send in another robotic rover mission near 'Sagar15' the last signalled place in mars to identify more data on the suspecious rock formation and the un-explained lake of white powder.

Mangalyaan-2 - the robotic mission takes off in the year 2016 and reaches martian atmosphere, with the help of baloons and landing rockets, the rover is successfully landed on Mars's surface. 




Using the inbuilt camera, the ground team pans across and watches for the first time Martian surface from ground zero. 

1 hour after the initial adjustments were made, the rover's antenaa is tuned on - it picks up the 3 second signal from Mangalyaan-1, and reaches the spot.

There the rover discovers the remains of Mangalyaan-1 - whose top cover was crushed and the side cameras shattered.

The rover zooms in and sends in the pictures from Mangalyaan-1 - picks up the battery for its use- the ground team discuss that the cause of mangalyaan-1's demise might be because of a strong martian storm.

While the rover was recharing its batteries, it hears some rocks falling behind and points its camera and pans the area where the rocks seemed to be falling. Finding nothing there, it keeps moving in the direction of the 'sagar15'.

The rover needs to cross a small hillock to reach the other side of the rock formation to reach to 'sagar15'. Just when it tries to cross by its left side, the climate suddenly changes 
and a huge dust storm starts to reach near the rover. 

Mission control on earth decide to bring the rover to safety by parking it beneath the cave like formations in the rocks.

Once inside the cave like formation - the sand storm sweeps outside - the rover's gas finder probe detects increased oxygen levels in the cave - and the mission control give instructions to explore the cave system.

The rover suddenly detects some movements nearby and pans its camera again on the outside - but again could not find anything.

The rover once again switches on its flash lights and ventures into the cave system - it finds a green liquid and a blue moss formation on the walls of the cave. 

Mission control on earth give command to test samples of the blue moss. 

The rover tests the picks up a sample and starts analyzing, when suddenly the small rock pieces start to fall behind the rover. The rover pans across to see in the direction and suddenly with a huge thud, the camera is shattered and mission control hears of a huge rock trashing on the surface of the rover - effectively destroying further command module access. But the rover finally sends in some important data about the blue moss that it analyzed. 

It turns out that the blue moss is the rare free radical - 'Unobtainium' - which is thought to be the cure for many viral diseases and cancer. Its molecular structure can also be changed to make it a biological weapon. Hence starts the race for obtaining this rare mineral from mars.

To be continued.. 

DEDICATION - EXPEDITION TO MARS - IN FOND MEMORY OF..

Dear friends,

This is the science fiction story of what might happen to a group of 6 Indian defense personnel on a manned mission to mars.

The story, character and any names mentioned here is based purely on imagination and any similarity with anyone living or dead is purely coincidental.

For the sake of simplicity, I have used the names of Indian, US and Chinese space missions are named as ISPA, ASAN and CETRA.

This is a story for scientific enthusiasts - so, buck up and enjoy the ride to mars in your imaginations. 

I dedicate this story to my 'manasiga guru' - writer Sujatha, whose SCI-FI stories inspired a generation.

Enjoy the ride and don't forget to leave your comments on how I could improve this story line.

see you in Mars. 



yours SCI-FIly,
VJ