My Little Pony: My Little Pony The Martian

AMICITAS Mission Three – Mission Day 91

ARES 3 solar day 93

There is a large wall clock hanging above the small kitchen in the living area, which is currently showing seven fifty-nine.

The Amicitas team members stood aside, fully dressed in space suits and headsets, except for their helmets. There was a marker stuck in a hole in the dragonfly's hoof, waiting for Mark to call out a number or letter in English for her to write on the whiteboard. Starlight Glimmer dragged her bandaged injured leg and sat on a stool. The No. 4 computer screen in front of her displayed the ASCII code table that Tingting had found the day before. Fireball held another marker in his claws and stood in front of another whiteboard, waiting for Starlight to report the content converted from the code consisting of two characters and record it on the whiteboard. Spitfire sat next to Starlight and watched over her, while Berry oversaw everything else.

However, Berry thought that supervising this position also meant that she actually had nothing to do.

"Is everyone ready?" Mark said on the spacesuit communication channel, "It's time!"

"Mark, everyone is ready." Dragonfly replied.

"Okay, now the Pathfinder is moving..." Mark paused here, and the ponies waited until he called out: "Four!" and a few seconds later, "Three."

Dragonfly recorded them all. Starlight announced from the side at the same time: "C!"

"Four! E!"

"N!"

So Fireball wrote this letter next to the "C" just now.

"Four!...Eight!...Four!...One!...Four!...Three!...Four!...B!"

"H...A...K...R..."

This cycle continues, with half a letter sent every six to ten seconds. After five minutes, the transmission ended.

"The pointer just returned to the reply card position," Mark said. "The message is over. What did it say?"

Fireball picked up his whiteboard and placed it where Starlight and the others could clearly see it. Starlight's next words expressed everyone's thoughts: "Mark, are you sure they are speaking English?"

"It looks like the phrases we use in hydrographs," Dragonfly added.

"A phrase is an abbreviation," Mark said nonchalantly, "Okay, I'll be right back. We'll figure it out."

So the pile of letters on the fireball whiteboard did not move at all before Mark entered the cabin from the No. 2 airlock. The content is as follows: CNHAKRVR2TLK4PTHFDRRPPLONGMSG.

"Dingting, you are right." Mark looked at the pile of letters and said, "These are abbreviations. They are all phrases. And in order not to waste transmission time, they have not used the space character in the ASCII code." He said He took the marker from Fireball and wrote "FOR LONG MESSAGE" below the end of the string of characters on the whiteboard. Then he found those "2"s, wrote "TO" under each one, and added the word "TALK" in the middle. After that came "PATHFINDER", so the letters "PRP" became "PREPARE".

So only "CNHAKRVR" was left on the whiteboard. Mark thought about this for a while, and then wrote the word "Rover" corresponding to "RVR". Finally, he finally found a way to add the two words at the beginning of this message:

"CAN HACK ROVER TO TALK TO PATHFINDER PREPARE FOR LONG MESSAGE."

"What is 'hacking'?" Tingting asked.

"I thought you mentioned before that humans don't have remote sensing technology." Starlight asked, "How can they operate the rover from Earth?"

"What is 'remote sensing'?" Berry asked.

Starlight pointed to her horn and said, "It's the magic that unicorns use to move things."

"Oh……"

"'Hacking' means modifying the instructions on the computer." Mark explained, "Pathfinder originally communicated with Sojourner. But Sojourner is now damaged. So NASA probably wants to treat the rover as a new one. Sojourners come to use it.”

"Is this okay?" Berry asked.

"That's natural. It's so damn clever... uh... yes, it's pretty good." Mark forced himself to pay attention to his words. "If the Pathfinder can communicate with the rover, I can use the rover's computer to Read and reply to messages on the Internet. This way we don’t have to use ASCII codes anymore. It will be much faster.”

"But NASA is on Earth," Xiaoting still didn't seem to believe it. "How could they modify a rover on Mars?"

"So they need my help." Mark continued to explain, "The long message they are going to send is likely to be an instruction. Or a command from the computer." He added a little more explanation for the convenience of understanding.

“So,” Tingting thought about it carefully and said, “You just said that NASA wanted to ‘hack’ the rover, but you actually meant that you were going to ‘hack’ the rover.”

Mark thought about this sentence carefully and said softly: "Yeah, I guess I am probably a hacker now. Just get me a virus and a Russian IP address, and I will be ready."

"What is a 'virus'?" Starlight asked.

"What is 'Russia'?" Tingting asked immediately.

"What's an 'address'?" Beibei chased after her.

Mark sighed, then turned to look at the dragon and said, "Are you going to ask me again, 'What is 'IP'?'"

"I know what IP is." Fireball replied, "IP is the stuff that stays in that fucking box every day." He pointed at the stinky curtain behind the bunk.

"Oh my god," Mark groaned, rubbing his forehead with his thumb and two fingers.

"what is……"

"That's enough, today's English class ends here." He said, rubbing his forehead harder.

"Four...E...Four...Five...Five...Three..." Mark reported here and paused, "The message is not over yet, but they have paused. What just said?" At this time, Distance began to receive the message. Just under a minute and a half has passed.

"The message just sent was, 'Greetings from... HER MESS....'" Dragonfly replied, "But they only spelled it with an 'S'."

"Meow? There's only one..." The ponies paused when they heard Mark's voice, "No, that's 'Hermes'." He gasped, "They are actually broadcasting... Wait, that The head started sending messages again! Four, C! Four...E...four...three...four...eight..."

It took them more than twenty minutes to receive the rest of the message. After the transmission was completed, Mark immediately returned to the cabin and once again translated a bunch of abbreviations sent by NASA.

"Okay," he said at last, "they're going to send another message on the hour. Mind you, we have to make sure that message is received word for word, because I have to type it word for word into the rover's computer program. ...It’s a certain location in the computer instructions.”

"It's just an order, right?" Tingting interjected from the side.

"Uh...that's right. Besides..." Mark clicked on the whiteboard with Fireball, squinted his eyes and read the words on it carefully, then scratched his head and said, "For some reason they want us to be in the twenties." Everybody get outside and take a picture within minutes. God knows what they want to do."

"Who is 'Tian'? Can you ask her?"

"Ah... uh... it's better not to explain. What I just meant is, I don't know why they want to take pictures of us."

"Maybe it's because they want to make sure you're okay." Starlight thought about it and answered cautiously.

"How is that possible?" Mark said, pointing to the lower part of the space suit he was wearing before he could take it off. "When I stand outside, you will only see the space suit I am wearing. ! They can't even see our faces! It's ridiculous... It's really stupid to do this! Just like Roscoe and Cletus!"

"Starlight, I didn't hear you clearly just now," Berry asked in pony language, "Did Mark say he wanted to take a photo outside or something?"

"That's right," Starlight replied. "Did you see that rotating object on the Pathfinder that Mark uses to receive messages from Earth? That's a camera."

"Oh..." Berry said, "That's why it can see those cards, right?"

"Uh, yes. Otherwise, what do you think it is?"

"I...uh...magic?" Too embarrassed to say it out loud, Berry could only mumble something vaguely to the side.

"Wait a minute," Fireball seemed to notice something, "Even if we don't use sun visors, the sun's glare may obscure our faces. So what's the point of doing this?"

Berry turned to look at Starlight and asked, "Can you help us get a protective bubble filled with air so we can take off our helmets and take this photo?"

"It's okay to do it," Starlight said, "but I wouldn't do it! It's a complete waste of magical energy, and if I lose focus while casting the spell, we'll be in big trouble!"

"Then what will happen if we refuse?" Dragonfly asked.

"We are guests here." Berry said. "Mark and his people can let us leave. We still have to obey their orders as much as possible. No matter what, there is nothing wrong with being polite."

"But then they can't see anything but our space suits!" Fireball yelled.

After hearing this, Berry smiled ghostly. "Well, I'm sure we can figure something out," she said. "Give me that whiteboard first."

"What the f**k is this?" came Annie Montrose's snarl from the other end of the phone in Venkat's hand. "Is this some kind of hippie shit from space or something?"

"All the photos you requested have been given," Venkat said while he was busy verifying the latest version of the design draft of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Watney supply space vehicle. "Can you please stop BBing."

"'Are you satisfied???' (C'mon get happy?) There are six weird-looking birds drawn next to it?" An angry Annie refused to soften her attitude, but Venkat actually had no intention of appeasing her mood. Meaning, "Is this some shit about alien culture?"

"Wrong, this is a bad American culture." Venkat said, "And it's from the Partridge family. You were too young to remember TV drama reruns, so you can't blame me."

"What kind of replay?...Forget it, just pretend I didn't ask." Annie said, "If nothing else, you can't even see their faces in the picture. You must get me a picture that includes their faces as soon as possible. photo."

"It can't be done."

"What?"

"Because astronauts who stay on the surface of Mars without wearing helmets tend to be GG." Venkat said, "Annie, let's not talk anymore. I have a programmer from JPL here who has something important to tell you. Farewell!"

"But……"

The beep of the call being hung up sounded so incomparably sweet to Venkat's ears at this moment.

Jack Trevor, the new chief programmer of the Pathfinder resurrection project, was frozen at the door of Venkat's office. "It's nothing important," he said. "I just wanted to come over and let you know that Johansson has confirmed that the 141-byte command will allow the rover to receive software updates. She is ready to guide Mark step by step. Let’s proceed to the next step.”

"Great," Venkat said, "please take a seat." The chairs in front of Venkat's workbench were actually folding stools stolen from other tables in the already crowded JPL lounge. In the current environment where all project progress is dedicated to rescuing Mark Watney and his friends, having a little private work space on the campus has become a luxury. Venkat had almost lost the patience to answer questions about what was in the refrigerator.

"Thanks." Jack immediately pulled out a folding stool and sat down.

"Let me guess, using Hermes as a communication relay is not bad, right?" Venkat asked.

"The effect is better than expected." Jack replied, "Previously, we transmitted through Pathfinder's direct link to the earth, and the speed was about less than one thousand bits per second; during this process, we also started to connect Various measures to initiate the deep space exploration network. Currently, Hermes can transmit data to Pathfinder at a speed of approximately 13,000 bits per second, and the uplink we connect to Hermes is naturally much faster than this. If It would be great if we could find a way for Pathfinder to communicate using those relay satellites in Mars orbit..."

"That's what you say, but the tracking speed of the high-gain antenna is really not fast enough." Venkat sighed, "Fortunately, we can speed up the operation by increasing the power of the imager motor; otherwise, it will run according to the original design Judging from the speed, we may not even be able to send fifty characters a day."

"The potential unleashed by these old detectors is really amazing, isn't it?" Jack looked very enthusiastic about this. "By the way, I still have a few friends who want to try to resurrect the Opportunity detector. We have had it for four years. Her signal has not been received. It is possible that the last dust storm has cleaned out her solar panels..."

"Choose your own moment and be responsible for your own profits and losses." Venkat interrupted, "We had already calculated this situation when we found out that Mark was going to find Pathfinder. The last time we communicated with Opportunity, she had three One wheel was frozen; but even if the remaining six were still working, she wouldn't be able to drive 3 kilometers in a day. Opportunity's last known position was about kilometers away from Ares . Now we have many other projects with better prospects to work on.”

"But at least I can tell them that they have the authority to do this, right?" Jack leaned forward and said, "Of course they will spend their own time and money to advance the project, just like you said."

"Okay," Venkat said at last, "but I bet that the chances of them successfully resurrecting Opportunity are better than re-launching a Viking lander and flying to Mark."

"It's hard to say, who knows." Jack muttered before leaving.