My Little Pony: My Little Pony The Martian

Mission Log – Solar Day 74

Hello humans reading this! This is Starlight... Sorry, I can't find the right words to express my last name. Mark asked me to write this article with the help of a dictionary on his computer.

I saw a lot of pictures of animals on a page on his computer. Among these animals, the one that looked most similar to me was called "horse", but it wasn't very similar. The horse you are talking about has a strange face and a very small brain. What's more, I have horns, and neither does the horse you mentioned.

Mark didn't feel like writing much today, so he went for a walk outside the cabin. He was angry and so was I. We hate this rover so much. It stinks like a toilet and is smoky. We had to save this stuff for the farm, but it was too bad. We couldn't move at all in the car because it was so full. Our only way to breathe was to put on our extravehicular suits and go for a walk outside, but it was really troublesome. The distance between us can only be maintained within six hoofs. I haven't walked for so long that my legs are almost useless.

Mark thinks we'll reach Pathfinder in two or three solar days. The ground here is different. The place where Mark lives is very flat. There are hills, ravines, and a lot of rocks everywhere. On such terrain, Mark couldn't drive fast even if he wanted to. The rover kept swaying around as we drove over small patches of rock. Today we faced a large boulder that we couldn't drive through, so we had to take a detour. Today we walked a total of seventy-two...

"Starlight shines, this is Amicitas."

……km.

"Starlight Glimmer, this is Amicitas, please reply when you receive it."

"Go ahead, Amicitas. I'm a little busy right now, over."

"Just a daily status check, Starlight, how's it going?"

"About eight words per minute."

"Sorry, Starlight, I didn't hear you clearly."

"I said we are fine, Berry. I know you are fine too, because you would have called me if anything happened."

"Oh... uh... okay. Then, I'll contact you tomorrow. Amicitas has finished the call."

It took me half an hour to write this diary. I'm learning to type, but I'm learning too slowly. I need to practice. I need to tell humans how our magic and technology works. We need humans to help our species find us and let them pick us up. In order for humans to help us, we must also help humans.

Writing this also helped me learn more English. It’s strange to say that English and our languages ​​obviously use different vocabulary, but why are the words arranged in the same order? The numbers are basically the same. There are many other places that I can’t mention right now. possible……

Mark returned to the rover. He asked me to stop writing now. I hope I get another chance to talk to you.

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Mission Log – Solar Day 77

We found it!

It took a little longer than I expected because our navigation system wasn't perfect; and there are so many small craters and rocks here in the Ares Valley that it felt like we were on the face of a teenager with pimples. Same as driving.

But we discovered Twin Peaks this morning. We drove directly towards the mountain and soon saw the lander. Or, at least, the small portion of the lander that's still above the surface.

When Pathfinder landed forty years ago, the area was a mostly flat plain surrounded by small hills and various impact craters. But since then, somehow a lot of wind-blown dust began to accumulate around it, eventually forming a new dune of its own. When we arrived only the antenna masts were still exposed; had the sun not hit the metal at just the right moment, we might have missed or even run over the old space probe. So doesn’t this count as a successful ending to this journey?

Once we were sure what we found, we parked the rover, stepped outside, and unfolded the solar panels to charge the car. Of course, we only drove about 20 kilometers today; but since we have reached our destination, why not take this opportunity to recharge the battery? Once we were done and settled in, Starlight and I began carefully cleaning the Martian dust covering the Pathfinder rover.

When we almost reached the depth of the tetrahedron panel of the fuselage, I found the Sojourner rover without much effort. Based on the conditions when we found it, it was almost right next to the lander. It is speculated that it may have exhausted its battery power in some kind of emergency mode, presumably trying to contact Pathfinder, wondering why the mother ship never responded.

I threw the Sojourner straight into the airlock - it was less than half a pony tall and shorter than a pony, so it fit easily. The Pathfinder is much bigger, and taking it home requires careful consideration.

To do this, Starlight took out her magic battery that had not been used much during the entire trip. I know she wants to try to lift the thing, but since I have no idea how unicorn telekinesis actually works, I don't want to have Starlight carry the entire detector with the antenna or imager bracket. If it gets up, it may damage the most important components of these lander. So I stopped Starlight and took some time to explain to her the situation we were facing.

Pathfinder and Sojourner had a combined mass of almost 600 kilograms at launch. That’s not counting parachutes, heat shields, landing platforms with brake thrusters or windlass, and any other payload that would accompany the rover to the Martian surface. Among so many things, the only thing still affixed to the rover is the air bag that automatically inflates when landing, giving the lander enough time to bounce and jump before finally stopping on the surface of Mars. The bags remain attached primarily because there is no device designed to separate them from the detector.

Once the lander stops rolling, it will immediately open three triangular petal-shaped panels covered with solar panels. Once this maneuver was completed, it deployed a small ramp, releasing the Sojourner rover. After that, except for the operation of the high-gain antenna and stereo imager, Pathfinder never moved again... until today.

If conditions were ideal, I would bring the Pathfinder back to the living area intact; there are some devices installed on the side panels, but they are completely unimportant to me. The only useful thing is the solar cells on the side panels. If I could bring these batteries back to my neighborhood, I might at least be able to use them to provide some power to my new radio equipment.

The problem is, I only have two options before me: either keep the old solar cells here, or keep those new solar cells I brought. There is no room on the roof of the rover to accommodate both the fourteen residential solar panels I brought along and a complete Pathfinder rover. I couldn't fold the Pathfinder's side panels back up because the main masts were fully extended and I couldn't retract them properly without power. If I force the panel shut, I risk damaging these antennas.

It didn't take long for me to make up my mind to ditch the side panels. So, after careful application of some high-tech mechanical engineering tool (a crowbar), the Pathfinder's center panel was separated from the rest of the body. After confirming that all irrelevant panels had been completely detached, and after Starlight repeatedly assured me that she would apply force from underneath the detector during transportation, I stepped back and let the cave version of Master Yoda take over.

To my surprise, she only lifted it briefly, moving it away from the removed side panel. She placed it on a cluster of rocks (I looked it up: it was Half Dome) to point out the problem: those old airbags. While the sand and soil carried by the wind buried the pathfinder, they also took advantage of the tear in the air bag and filled it with soil.

This time, Starlight was not willing to deal with the airbags as neatly as it had done before using an angular laser to cut off the skin of the spacecraft. Her response to this was "I didn't know I might break something." So we started working together; I held a knife and Starlight worked her magic very briefly and carefully; in about fifteen minutes we had almost completely cut away all the air sacs.

Starlight then lifted the core components of the Pathfinder onto the roof of the rover and placed them at the back of the luggage rack. The surface sampling bags stacked on top could just provide a certain degree of cushioning. The remaining space in front of it is just enough to put down the solar panels that were removed for charging in the morning.

When we were done, we were in no rush to get back into the rover. I mean, we're really, really not in any rush to get back on the rover. We spent half the nights on the road intertwined with each other, partly because driving in a multi-billion-dollar car on the surface of Mars for eleven days felt so lonely... but Mainly because in such a cramped living space, our only resting position is to lean on each other.

And I haven’t even mentioned the stench inside the rover, the frequent muscle cramps, and the complete lack of space to move around inside. We desperately want to find an excuse to stay out of the car, even if doing so means wasting precious CO2 filters that should be saved for later use.

So we spent about an hour discussing how to recycle the side panels of the detector.

With the antenna mast deployed, Pathfinder's core is slightly too large to fit into the rover's airlock. The panels might fit in, but barely, and only one can fit in at a time. To do this, one of us would have to stay in the rover and the other would have to stay outside. It took a while to turn it around to find an angle that would allow both doors of the airlock to close. But even if it is so troublesome, it is not impossible to do it when the need is really urgent.

And I finally decided that it wasn't necessary. Even though we had eaten so much food along the way, the rover was still as full as it was at the beginning. I don't even think we could fit two side panels into the car, let alone three. And once I return these temporarily appropriated solar panels to the solar array in the residential area, I will no longer need any excess power.

So we finally decided to leave these side panels as the last memory of the Carl Sagan Memorial Station, waiting for the dust to slowly eat them up again. I'm sorry, Carl; but if you were alive, I'm pretty sure you'd say I should make any decision that helps me survive. Besides, they're sure to find something named after you.

So we once again returned to the site of the crucifixion, the cabin of Rover 2. It's time to think about future plans.

The purpose of all this work was to find a working radio. I won't even know if the Pathfinder can be repaired until I get back to the living quarters, but from the looks of it nothing seems to be damaged. I was able to blow the dust off the components using air from one of the pressure tanks. I have some lubricant on hand for the rover wheels, which should make the high-gain antenna and imager motor bearings more flexible. And the tools and spare parts I have on hand can repair any electrical failure other than a blown CPU or memory. I'm pretty confident that I can solve any purely mechanical or electronic system problem.

But the question is, what to do next after fixing it? No one has tried to contact the Pathfinder probe in thirty-five years. The signal it emits is indeed stronger than anything currently in the residential area, but it is still weak compared to almost any radio device on Earth. I can only hope that someone notices a microwave signal coming from some really weird place, gets curious, and contacts NASA to have them point dozens of radio telescopes in that direction.

But let's just assume for now that they do. What to do after that?

If I wanted to communicate with them, I could scribble and draw on surface sampling label cards; there were fifty of them, and I could write on both sides. But how do I receive their reply? The Pathfinders did not carry any conspicuous lighting sources or similar equipment, so imitating the ponies and their telegraph communications was not feasible. In this case, the only way left is to move a certain part on the Pathfinder to transmit information. There are only three components on Pathfinder that can be controlled to achieve this effect: the Sojourner rover, the imager, and the high-gain antenna.

The Pathfinder's antenna needs to be pointed always toward the Earth, or the direction it estimates the command signal is coming from, so swinging the antenna to communicate is simply not feasible. The imager can only rotate around its axis - it can cover 360 degrees, but it can only move in this one direction. In this case, the most I can receive is a "yes" or "no" response.

So that's why, despite the extremely limited space inside the car, the Sojourner still stays in the cabin with us, squeezing in the few spaces we have to move around. If I could fix both the Pathfinder and the Sojourner, I'd have up to six moving parts—the Sojourner's six wheels—to work with. I could come up with a communication method similar to semaphores; I might also be able to label letters and numbers on the wheels and have NASA turn the wheels to the corresponding characters. This is of course still far from a real conversation, but at least it's better than a simple "yes" and "no".

I have many other things to think about, but now is not the time. Now it’s time to start savoring the works of Agatha Christie. There's also a certain unicorn here waiting to hear more stories of humans killing each other. And tonight one of us may start sleepwalking again, looking for a more comfortable place to sleep.

But I'm going to put it here now: If I wake up to Sojourner holding me to sleep, I'm going to throw that fucking machine out of the airlock. If it really wants to die, it can consider finding a way to hitchhike back to the Ashidalia Plains on its own.