My Little Pony: My Little Pony The Martian

AMICITAS Mission Three – Mission Day 235

ARES 3 solar day 233

[10:42] Watney: Engine testing complete. The rock sample scale read four hundred and eighty-three kilograms when loaded. Then we started the engine and gradually increased the thrust until the sample scale read one hundred and eighty-three kilograms. After some fine-tuning, this reading was maintained stably for ten seconds. Then we slowly reduced the thrust to shut down the vehicle and removed the engine from the pylon. The throttle setting corresponding to 100 kilograms of thrust is just over six percent of the rated thrust. This test was powered by a single magic battery and ran for 11 seconds. The initial reading of the battery was % and the final reading was %. Sorry, I don't have any other energy consumption data here.

[11:01] JPL: Thanks, Mark. It's great news that you're back at work. Can you tell us what exactly "just over" six percent is?

[11:27] Watney: The best I would say is less than half. Pony's one-hundredth mark on their throttle is less than a millimeter wide, and it's an analog gauge.

[11:58] JPL: Okay. We will take seven percent as the standard and ensure that the MAV lift-off procedure can correctly correct the excess thrust. We'll let you know how it goes.

By the way, can you take the sojourner with you? If you can bring it into the cave, we can use it to take some photos of dragonflies, and then let it explore the environment inside the cave on its own. The onboard computer of Rover 2 can automatically direct the detector activities, and you can export the collected data through Pathfinder when you return to your residential area.

[12:24] Watney: No problem. Or I could go there with a handheld camera. I still have this.

The Sojourner is equipped with three cameras, but its vision is not provided by the cameras. These cameras are not video cameras; they are digital still cameras, two black and white and one color, which output very low-resolution images. As for the way this small rover "observes" the world, it actually relies on four pairs of infrared laser transceivers that can detect the presence of obstacles in its path. One of the transmitters was damaged during its forty years of slumber, but the remaining three are still working well enough; and times have changed, and Sojourner's software has improved a lot, with intermittent still images being compared to the most recent update. Object recognition software running on the rover's computer serves as a decision aid.

So even though the little rover is only "blinking" every minute or two, transmitting images to its other half's brain, which currently resides in Rover 2's computer, its laser vision allows it to Realize that you've been lifted into the air, so it's not the right time to turn the wheel.

There was no thermometer on the probe—all the environmental survey instruments were mounted on the Pathfinder, abandoned in the Ares Valley along with the few panels that once held the Sojourner. Therefore, it did not sense the gradually warming ambient temperature and rising air pressure when the cave airlock was inflated to allow astronauts to enter.

The detector is also not equipped with any sound wave detection equipment such as microphones. At that time, its designers and builders thought about it and concluded that there was no reason to install it, because for such a robotic exploration vehicle on Mars, whether it is ears or floats, it is very inexplicable. Therefore, the sojourner naturally did not hear what Mark said: "Good morning, Dragonfly. We have another visitor today."

But its rear camera, the only color camera among the three onboard cameras, took photos of the cocoon with a working interval of one minute. Then the pattern recognition software on the rover negotiated with the navigation logic implemented by the hardware in the detector body, and finally came to a conclusion that exposed the machine's serious shortcomings in reasoning capabilities.

I don't know what it is, but it's definitely not a rock.

"NASA wants a sojourner to hang out in the cave for a few days," Mark added. "It will stop and sleep at night and wake up in the morning. If you hear any strange noises in the middle of the night, it's probably that guy sniffing the car. Plum tree."

The sojourner did not hear this, but he noticed that he was lowered to the ground.

The bottom of the cocoon is about a foot above the cave floor. The sojourner began to plan a course of action to explore the environment inside the cave, and took another photo of the surroundings; however, its upgraded onboard software was most interested in this non-rock object, and it just stared at the cocoon. put. It adjusted the wheel bogie, rotated the detector fuselage, and tried hard to lift the tail and the color camera and spectrometer installed at the tail, moving upward toward the cocoon.

Mark captured this scene from the side. At first glance, it looks like a sojourner raising his head and looking up at the cocoon.

The right image, at the right time, has the power to change the world—or, in other words, prevent it from changing.

The next day, NASA released this photo together with several other pictures that Mark had selected from the memory of the No. 2 rover. The resolution was lowered during the transmission process to save communication bandwidth. The photo attracted the attention of several news agency editors, but it was USA Today that eventually discovered the clues linking the creature in the cocoon to the recent resurrection of the probe.

So even though most news outlets ran the photo, it was USA Today’s front-page headline that set the stage for this internet meme: “Thanks—Aliens for another miracle, pioneering Mars probe comes back to life. "

In just a few days, the little rover became a cultural symbol for dragonfly fans and defenders around the world. A wave of creations broke out on the Internet. Paintings such as the detector standing aside to protect the cocoon, or presenting a Valentine's Day card to the cocoon, or repelling the intruding monster from Mars with green tentacles, are everywhere. Xenophobic forces also tried to fight back, posting works that vilified the Sojourners as zombie detectors controlled by mysterious and evil aliens; Dragonfly fans responded with all kinds of cute Sojourner workers, and Sojourner Zombie seeks advice from the recently deceased Opportunity soul, and an editorial cartoon that became popular around the world: Sojourner Zombie holds up a slogan that gave me my heart, lost her soul.

Most of the skeptics who had questioned the wisdom of the decision to welcome extraterrestrials into residential areas after the collapse of Dragonfly fell silent in the face of the overwhelming wave of support online. Xenophobic groups still retain their stereotypes, but they also find that the current situation can be explained by the famous saying from the Bible: When love is perfect, put away fear. After the incident subsided, the support for rescuing Mark and the aliens increased instead of falling, and many doctoral students studying media and art will use this blurry photo of the detector looking up at the saviors as their own The basis for a dissertation.

The rumor that "Dingting repaired Sojourner and Sojourner fell in love with her" spread so much that it even reached Mark via NASA; therefore, the astronaut stranded on Mars finally decided not to leak the more explosive news. : No matter how deep the Sojourner explored the cave, and no matter where it was placed on the farm, the refugees would always find it nestled next to the cocoon every morning when they visited the cave.

Maybe it's just a coincidence. After all, the hanging position of the cocoon is near the cave entrance, where the cave wall is the thinnest and where the radio signal from the rover outside the cave can be received the strongest. But then I thought about it, maybe this is another masterpiece inspired by the magic of a pony (or a bug horse).

But what will happen in the future will not be stated for now. Back in the day, after Mark took the photo, the sojourner got as close as possible to the hanging cocoon without actually touching it, and made another measurement through the spectrometer that could not draw any specific conclusions. Then it turned around, raised the other end of the body, and captured a blurry black-and-white three-dimensional image of the unknown structure within the narrow imaging range.

After all this effort, the only thing Sojourner chose to express to JPL and all mankind was: No chance, still not a stone.

At the same time, the jet produced by testing the disassembled Amicitas main engine merged into the weak and elusive Martian trade wind system, rotating first to the northwest and then to the southwest, traveling along an atmospheric boundary line. It blew dust as fine as talc on the Martian surface high into the sky. As the weak sunlight in summer continues to inject energy into the air, more and more air gathers into the wind and is carried forward by the air currents.

Magical thrusters can produce unpredictable effects in alien environments.