- This article is about Helios' mission to Mars in 1994. For the spacecraft used, see Phoenix (spacecraft).
The Helios Mars mission was the first privately founded space mission to another planet in the Solar System, operated by the American private company Helios Aerospace. Its goal was to beat its national competitors NASA and Roscosmos in the race to Mars and be the first to land humans on the red planet. Additional goals were to establish a base on the Martian surface, mine resources to produce fuel, and find water deposits.
History[]
Race to Mars[]
- Main article: Race to Mars
During a press conference in 1992, Helios Aerospace CEO Dev Ayesa announced that their spacecraft Phoenix would be ready for launch at the next launch window in 1994 already, 2 years earlier than the planned missions of the USA and the USSR. He also revealed that the mission would be captained by ex NASA astronaut Ed Baldwin, after he was removed from NASA's Sojourner-1 mission.[1]
Phoenix started in fall 1994 within 2 weeks of its competitors, the American Sojourner 1 and the Soviet Mars-94 vehicles.[2] At first, it appeared as though Phoenix was definitely going to beat the other crafts to Mars, but the deployment of a solar sail on Sojourner-1 pushed them ahead.[3] Additionally, Mars-94 burned their engines to dangerous extremes, pushing them even further, putting them in first place whilst Phoenix was last.
However, the engines of Mars-94 malfunctioned, which caused dangerous levels of radiation within their craft, leading to the necessity of a rescue mission. In theory, the Phoenix was perfect for a rescue mission, having a landing craft that could be used as a ferry, and a greater crew capacity than the NASA spacecraft. In spite of this, it was decided by the ground control of Helios Aerospace that they would press on to Mars.
The crew of the Phoenix attempted to conduct the rescue mission regardless, however found that they were unable to light their engines due to a software update that was sent from Earth during the no-go message from Helios Mission Control, forcing the Sojourner, which lacked a subsidiary craft and had a smaller crew compartment, to conduct the mission, forfeiting the Mars mission. Commander Baldwin attempted to conduct the mission in lieu of Dev Ayesa's command, but the software update removed crew control from the craft, forcing the Phoenix to continue onwards. This decision led to the Sojourner craft taking great damage when the Mars-94 malfunctioned a second time.[3] However, the Sojourner-1 survived this damage and was able to refuel using the Soviet craft.
Due to dust storms on Mars, the Helios mission was unable to attempt landing until Sojourner was already in orbit. An attempt at landing was made by Baldwin and Danny Stevens in the MSAM lander, but it was aborted by Baldwin due to navigation failures caused by the storm. Subsequently, the Sojourner became the first crewed craft to land on the Martian surface, though the Helios craft was able to land at a later date. Due to damage caused by a too rough landing, Sojourner was left too damaged to take off from the Martian surface again, leading to Phoenix and Popeye becoming the sole craft capable of taking all three crews back to Earth.[4]
Landing on Mars[]
After they finally managed to land on the ground, the Phoenix crew sent their two mobile habitat rovers and additional equipment to their landing site and started establishing their base camp and produce fuel from Martian ressources. Like the American Happy Valley base, Helios' base was built in the canyon Melas Chasma inside the Valles Marineris system, close to a ridge later named Gagarin Ridge.[5]
When Roscosmos found out about a potential deposit of liquid water in the underground of that ridge, they made a deal with Helios to use their drill and the Soviet crew was heading over from Happy Valley to Helios' base camp for a drilling mission, excluding the Sojourner crew from their discovery.[5]
Destruction of Helios' Mars base[]
- Main article: Gagarin Ridge drilling disaster
During the drilling mission, the giant drill came apart under too much housing pressure, caused due to Danny Stevens' refusal to increase the drill compressor speed due to his drug problem. As a result, parts of Gagarin Ridge collapsed, producing a huge landslide which resulted in the deaths of Isabel Castillo, Nick Corrado, and Alexei Poletov, and also destroyed the base, burying one of the rovers, the MSAM, and other Helios facilities.[6][7]
See also[]
References
- ↑ For All Mankind TV series, season 3, episode 2, "Game Changer"
- ↑ For All Mankind TV series, season 3, episode 3, "All In"
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 For All Mankind TV series, season 3, episode 4, "Happy Valley"
- ↑ For All Mankind TV series, season 3, episode 5, "Seven Minutes of Terror"
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 For All Mankind TV series, season 3, episode 6, "New Eden"
- ↑ For All Mankind TV series, season 3, episode 7, "Bring It Down"
- ↑ For All Mankind TV series, season 3, episode 8, "The Sands of Ares"