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Bloodworth

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Amber Nightingale
United Press

Aug. 4, 2045

Pasadena, CA. USA – The atmosphere was jubilant here at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Spaceflight Operations Center today as the long awaited Mars Resource Surveyor Satellite performed a successful aerocapture maneuver slowing it into a low permanent orbit around the red planet. Engineers and flight controllers had been effectively holding their breath for over a year when they lost contact with the craft. It was believed that the in transit communications antenna had failed in the extreme cold of space and JPL has been unsuccessful in reestablishing communications until this morning when the heat shield was jettisoned after the maneuver and the high-gain antenna was deployed by automatic systems. The red planet has a long history of being a satellite graveyard, so engineers and flight controllers were ecstatic when MRSS reported itself alive and well this afternoon after 17 months of silence.

The Mars Resource Surveyor is one of the largest and most expensive unmanned probes launched by NASA in decades having enough fuel on board to perform extensive maneuvers around Mars in the performance of its mission. After the next 24 hours or so of checking it’s systems to attempt to identify the problem which caused the loss of contact MRSS will begin its long awaited job of trying to pinpoint potential landing spots for the upcoming manned Mars mission by Destiny and her shuttle Thermopylae. In addition, MRS is equipped with a variety of subsurface scanning instruments to help locate resource sites for possible future colonization.

JPL chief Robert Dockendorf had this to say when the cheering had died down: “The faith that the engineers and technicians put in the Ames 42 AI flight computer appears to have been well founded. Even without an uplink from Earth, the craft knew where it had to go and what it had to do to get there. It performed flawlessly. I am proud to be able to say that I managed such a project. Now we have a task at hand; to pave the way, after more than a century of dreaming, to put man on Mars.”
 

Bloodworth

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The MRSS is an entirely ficticious vessel within the scope of the scenario. I only post this here as a tool for the narrative of things to come.
 

Keatah

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I thought I was reading a real press-release, for real! I'm like thinking WTF when did we launch this. Then I read the comment at the bottom.
 
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