Life finds a way

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Life finds a way

Life on Mars

 

By

 

David Binelli

 

 

Copyright ©31st March 2019

 

 

In the beginning……

 

Two Mars experimental rovers, or MER's, called Opportunity and Spirit began their quest to explore the fourth planet in our solar system way back at the turn of the twenty first century.

No-one expected their mission to last any more than a few months but to the surprise of everyone at NASA and around the world they survived through some extreme and extraordinary conditions to last for many years.

Spirit was the first to succumb to the red planets treacherous geological conditions and became stuck in fine sand after travelling approximately 5 miles or nearly eight kilometres. It had lasted just over six years and the last communication from the rover was heard on March 10 2010.

Opportunity landed on the other side of the planet from Spirit three weeks later.

This remarkable rover managed to travel a distance of twenty eight miles, or forty five kilometres, before being almost consumed by one of the largest and most destructive sand storms to be witnessed on Mars for many years.

The ground crew at NASA mission control tried unsuccessfully to communicate with Oppy as it had come to be affectionately known, for over a thousand times to no avail. The last known communication was on June 10 2018, and finally, on February 13 2019 NASA sadly declared that Opportunity's mission was over and it was now officially dead.

Its final resting place was a windswept gully in Perseverance Valley and the rover’s half-covered body along with its solar cells was observed at the time by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) circling the planet.

Many years later in 2069 exactly fifty years after the last sighting, a more recent MRO was sent to survey Mars. Oppy could no longer be seen and was presumed completely covered by Martian sand never to be seen again.

 

 

 

 

Back in 2070 I was just a long haired, eager-to-learn student filling in time at NASA by wading my way through literally millions of super-high-def images of the surface of Mars taken by the last MRO. It was a mind numbingly tedious and boring job which is why the task was given to students like myself. We were employed, on the lowest wage you can imagine to look for any anomalies in the images and add them to a database that was then investigated further by much more qualified guys than myself.

Day after day, week after week I would sit alone in my cupboard room, sorry I mean office, looking at the images blown-up on my huge monitor screen which was as wide as my desk, about five feet or so.

So you can imagine. By the end of the day my head felt like a marshmallow and I swear my eyes were rectangular.

Every day was pretty much the same but one day stands out in my memory banks like a Saturn 5 rocket taking off at night.

On that day, the agenda was no different and first job was always making sure I had a nice cup of sweet coffee with me as I sat down at my desk and clicked on the first image.

Nothing but red-brown stoney desert with the occasional outcrop of sedimentary rocks. Billions of years ago Mars had oceans of liquid water, so many of the rocks and boulders are similar in make-up to earths, but that didn’t make it any easier to try and study the images without falling asleep.

We were told to look for anomalies that were genuine, not something that looked like a cat or a goldfish if you squinted really hard with one eye closed. That meant there were very few occasions you would find anything of value, and when I mean very few, I mean once in ten thousand images and even those anomalies were dubious.

I mean….come on….

Life on Mars.

If there had been, or there ever was, life on Mars don't you think we would have seen it by now? We've been surveying the Mars surface for over a hundred years now and I think we even know it better than planet earth.

It was so rare to see REAL anomalies. I myself had never seen anything worthy of adding to the database but I had heard stories from other guys.

Well…. This day was one of those one in ten thousand.

I must have viewed, oh I don't know, maybe a hundred images and I had finished my coffee so it was about time for another, but before I got up from my seat I automatically without thinking clicked the next image which was something I had got into the bad-habit of doing.

When you have to view so many images your body and mouse-clicking-finger goes into auto-pilot and automatically clicks the next image without thinking.

The image was like all the others. It was from the latest MRO taken in 2069 and was one in a series of images snapped every time the MRO passed overhead.

Passed over Perseverance Valley to be exact.

I knew that valley like the back of my hand. I had studied it so many times I could draw you a picture of every outcrop of rocks with one eye closed and squinting.

This was something unusual.

An anomaly.

I clicked the next image and there it was again, only in a slightly different position.

On the next image it had moved some more, and then more and more in the subsequent five images, until the MRO was out of range.

I set up all the six images into an animated GIF which allowed me to see them one after another in rapid succession and sure enough the...the thing, whatever it was, had moved.

Now, bear in mind I was only a young student back then and I had no idea what I was seeing so I added the animated GIF and all the images separately onto the anomaly database which is what I had been taught to do and went and made another cup of coffee, pleased with myself that I had found something weird and had followed protocol…Excellent.

 

A couple of hours later it was time for lunch so I closed the Mars Imaging program, logged off my PC and made my way to the NASA cafeteria.

As I was stood in line waiting for my turn to be served, one of the other students called Phil Demski who I didn't know that well, but we had chatted a few times, came running over to me from the entrance door.

'Dave what the hell have you done?' He said excitedly pushing his glasses back up his nose.

'What do you mean?' I replied looking confused. 'When?’

‘Here.' Said Phil with his eyes stretched wide open. 'Today. Now.'

'Look Phil I don't know what you’re talking about?' I said hugging my dinner tray to my chest.

'Well Davy boy you've done something.' Replied Phil turning 180 degrees away from me and then immediately back. 'Because all the suits from upstairs and some other guys who I've never seen before are swarming all over your office, and mine, searching paperwork and disconnecting our PC's.'

'What?' I cried, throwing my tray down on the nearest table and heading back to my office as fast as I could.

Once back at my minuscule office I could see what Phil had said was right. What looked like security guys, were removing my PC and packing all my papers into a briefcase.

'David...David Getz?' Asked one of the men dressed in a black suit.

'Yes.' I replied nervously.

'Would you come with me please?' He said gesturing with his hand for me to walk off down the corridor with him.

I did as he asked and after navigating the warren of corridors, we finally got in an elevator which seemed to go up forever, finishing at a door with no markings on.

'Please go in.’ Said the mysterious man in black, so…obviously…I did as I was told

Inside it was just like any other office at NASA, except this one had a large monitor display on the wall next to the windows and there three people inside who I hadn't seen before.

'David. Please. Come in.' Said the guy behind the desk who was obviously in charge. 'I'm sorry for the security measures but we need to keep a lid on the situation. For now at least.'

I slowly took a couple of steps towards his desk.

'What's Going on?' I asked trying not to sound frightened.

'Ah. Yes.' He replied looking at the other two guys. 'I'm sorry. Let me introduce you. This is Dieter Neuhofer the Agency Science Chief and John Curtin the Mars Project Manager.'

They were stood on the same side of the desk as me, so I just looked in their direction and nodded at each in turn.

They didn't speak.

'This morning you added to the database, a small animated GIF, or video, of an anomaly on Mars, that you obviously thought was important.' Said the guy whose name I still didn't know. 'When it was brought to my attention, my immediate reaction, along with others.' He said raising his hand in the direction of the other two men. 'Was disbelief. In truth David I thought you were playing a prank on me…. Us. The Opportunity and Spirit Mars Rover mission has been finished for over fifty years now, and so, when this video of yours appeared, my first thought was it must be false.'

He stopped talking and turned to face the floor-to-ceiling windows that over looked the NASA complex.

Before he could talk again, John Curtin stepped towards the desk.

'David…. I am the Mars Project Manager dealing with all the current projects we have at the moment, and we have nothing capable of moving at this time. So I decided to check out your anomaly video…. and you were right.'

I began to smile in relief. In relief that they believed me and I wasn't going to be put on the next flight to NASA's office in Alaska.

'There is definitely something moving on the surface of Mars at Perseverance Valley.' Said John Curtin with a totally worried look on his face.

'What is it?' I asked looking round the room at all three of the men in anticipation.

'We think.' Began John Curtin before he was cut off mid-sentence by the man looking out of the window.

'It's Opportunity. The Mars Rover.' Said the man.

I laughed.

'Nooo. It can't be.' I said in disbelief. I may have been a young student but everyone at NASA knew the story behind THE most successful Mars Rover Missions EVER. 'We lost contact with them back in, what, 2019. That's like you said……' I said raising my hand towards the man behind the desk. 'Over fifty years ago.'

All the men looked at each other, and then one after another they all sat down leaving me standing.

'How can that be?' I asked beginning to feel way out of my depth.

'You may well ask David.' Said the man. 'It has effectively been dead, in temperatures below minus 50, covered completely in sand, stopping its solar panels charging the batteries for over fifty years. There is no way on earth that thing should be moving about.'

'But it's not.' I said cheerfully.

'It's not what?' All three of the men said in unison looking blankly at me.

'It's not on Earth.'

'It's no laughing matter David.' Said the nameless man sitting down in his sumptuous leather chair, and swivelling slightly from side to side, obviously deep in thought.

No-one said a word for what seemed like ages but in reality was probably only a minute or so, when suddenly the main man stood up.

'John I want you to try and make contact with Opportunity. Use David here as best you can. And try and be as discrete as possible until we have a reply from Opportunity.' Said the man with his arms folded across his chest and stroking his chin with his hand.

John Curtin and Dieter Neuhofer stood up.

'Of course Bill.' Replied John Curtin, as he turned and beckoned to me to follow him out of the office.

Dieter Neuhofer remained in the office as we left and made our way to the elevator.

'Who was that guy behind the desk?' I asked nervously.

'Oh. That was Bill. Bill Carsey. Or William Carsey to be more exact. The Director of NASA.'

'Wow. Ok. The Director.'

'Yep. Mr. Bigshot.' Said John as the elevator door opened and we both stepped inside.

The elevator began to descend and very quickly we reached the floor where the main flight control room was located. I had never been here before and it was everything I'd imagined. It looked like something out of a sci-fi film set.

The room was about the size of half a tennis court with a very high ceiling and no windows.

Two rows of desks with computers and monitors were aligned in a slight curve, one row behind the other and directly above and in front of them was the biggest monitor screen I had ever seen.

On the screen was Mars. I'd recognise that place anywhere.

'David. You sit here.' Said John Curtin. 'I know it's at the back of the room but I think you get a better view of the FLM from here.'

'Err...Thank you.' I said slowly sitting at the desk in disbelief of getting a job where I get to sit in the main control room at NASA.

Awesome.

John showed me how the computer system and my personal monitor worked and that whatever was on the main screen I could see and scrutinize on my monitor. And to be honest it wasn't much different from what I had been using in my cupboard sized office.

'John.' I said nervously, not wanting to sound out of my depth. What is the FLM?"

He smiled and rested his hand on my shoulder.

'The fucking large monitor.'

 

After my quick inauguration into NASA's main control room John explained to me the difficulty in trying to talk to Opportunity.

It used a language and transponder frequencies that were now obsolete. Also before it died, all those years ago, it had been unable to communicate directly with earth.

Why? Well, no-one knew exactly why.

At the time the general consensus was that the batteries had too little power left to send a message directly to earth so it would relay any communication via the Mars Orbiter which was a spacecraft that orbited Mars, but the power in the batteries was too small even to do that.

Trouble is. Today over fifty years later the current Mars orbiter is a High-Res camera-only satellite so communication with the rover on the surface of Mars is impossible.

Then it hit me.

If Opportunity truly is moving, then its batteries might have enough charge to communicate along the vast distance to earth. 

First things first.

I need to find Opportunity and track it...make sure it's on the move.

I already knew where Opportunity was located because I had seen it from my office, so it didn't take long to find using the HD camera on board the Mars Orbiter Satellite or MOS for short.

And there it was. Right in the middle of my monitor. About the size of 1 pixel. If I didn't know it was there I would have easily missed it.

I zoomed in again and again until I could see it clearly. The camera was amazing. The MOS was about 175 miles above the surface of Mars but it was like looking at it from across the street.

Everything appeared to be intact on the rover and I could make out the tracks its solid metal ridged wheels had made, although now I was up close I could see that it had only moved about thirty yards in what looked like four separate movements. It was on an incline of about twenty percent so could the movement have been caused by a combination of wind and gravity?

When I studied the picture the one thing that was obvious was that the solar panels were completely covered in sand and debris so the chance of there being any charge in the batteries was looking highly unlikely.

I plotted its current position using the tracking software which also added the time and set its position so I would receive an alert on my monitor screen, and also on my cell phone.

Now all I had to do was wait.

 

As a way of filling in time I decided to familiarize myself with the terrain surrounding Opportunity but all I could see was sand and rocks...and even more sand, so I soon gave up on that idea.

My next thought was about communication. What software did it use to communicate?

After a lot of searching I found that the underlying operating system was Wind River's VxWorks RTOS. The RTOS, or real-time operating system, was programmed in C, C++, Ada or Java. However, only C and C++ were standard to the OS, Ada and Java are supported by extensions.

Now this was all way over my head. I had heard of all of these things but had no idea how to use and program them to work with Opportunity.

 Also Opportunity transmitted the information using X-band radio waves in a different frequency range compared to what was used now so a little sweeping of the band would be required.

Now that I could manage.

 

Over the following few days I managed to find an old piece of emulator software that allowed me to emulate the old programming language meaning I could type the commands to Opportunity in good old fashioned, plain English. A bonus.

Also I found the frequency needed to transmit and receive the data to Opportunity using its HGA, high gain antenna, was 8.4GHz. Another bonus.

By the end of the week I had everything I needed  to start a trial communication with Opportunity, which was great as I was disappointed that I had not seen the slightest bit of movement from the rover, which after all the initial excitement was now somewhat of an anti-climax.

Anyway onwards and upwards.

Late Friday afternoon I sat nervously at my desk in the control room ready to send the first signal. All I had to do was type a command to Opportunity, wait twenty minutes or so, and see if I get data back or have a look at the tracker and see if I have movement.

But what should I say?

Hello Opportunity. How are you today?

Don't be stupid.

I flopped back in my seat throwing my arms in the air and then running my hands through my hair in frustration.

What the hell do I say to a geriatric Mars rover?

Finally I decided to tell it to move forward without deviation for two yards that way I would be able to see on the monitor quite easily if it moved. Anything less than that distance and although I would be able to see the change, it could easily be confused with an accidental movement. What I mean by that is the wind could have blown it along. Yes. Two yards forward was good.

Opportunity. Move forward two yards without deviation.

There. The message was sent. Now I wait.

I sat waiting for over an hour with no signs of movement or any data transfer. I knew it was too good to be true so I sent the message again just in case it hadn't received the information.

Opportunity. Move forward two yards without deviation.

Again I leaned back in my chair and waited, studying my monitor for any signs of movement, but still nothing.

What the hell. It's late Friday. I'll go home and continue this on Monday morning so I powered down the PC, switched the monitor to standby, and made my way out of the control room back to my car in the car park.

 

Monday morning arrived without any notifications on my cell phone to tell me Opportunity had been whizzing around Mars like a joyrider in a stolen car so I resumed the communication trial, as well as constantly checking Mars surface for any signs of movement. I changed the message to Opportunity… Move backwards two yards. Just in case it was unable to move forwards for whatever reason…maybe a stone lodged under a wheel or a malfunction in the drive system, but there was still nothing.

At 11am I had a brief meeting with John Curtin where I explained what I had been doing and that there was still nothing to report. Opportunity had not moved again.

Later that day I then began to question whether the frequency I was using was actually correct, so after much deliberation I decided to send the signal over the full spectrum from 8GHz to 12GHz which took much longer but at least that way I hoped something would reach Opportunity.

By the end of Monday there was still nothing.

The next few days were the same. Many various transmissions from me with nothing back.

I was beginning to lose my enthusiasm, which had been so high initially. I mean... Opportunity had been seen to move but now, weeks later and no more movement.

Maybe it was just some geological event like an earthquake, or marsquake, or maybe the winds managed to get underneath it and push it along?

Who knows? Coz I sure as hell don't.

 

The weekend came and went and I was back at NASA in the control room on Monday. It was mid-morning and I had just sent another transmission to Opportunity. I was trying to be professional but the lack of response from the rover didn't make it easy, and the message I sent probably wasn't completely appropriate for someone working for NASA in the 21st century.

It said.

 Ground control to Major Tom commencing countdown engines on.

I clicked the send button and thought nothing more of it, leaning back in my chair and clasping my hands behind my head.

As I looked at my monitor through half-opened eyes, a jumble of letters and symbols began appearing on the screen. My eyes began to widen in confusion not understanding what I was seeing. I slowly leaned forward resting my hands on my thighs as I studied the monitor. The jumble of characters resembled a sentence with groups of them which, in a normal sentence would be words but this was different, because it was completely jumbled-up with a mixture of letters and symbols from all over the keyboard. It was as if someone was just randomly hitting any key hoping it would make a word and then a sentence.

I stood up looking around the control room expecting a group of guys to be laughing as they played a practical joke on me, but there were only a few people in the room as was the norm on a Monday morning. Most were either in meetings or weren't due in till later.

I fell back down into my seat and stared at the screen again. The stream of characters had stopped as if the weird sentence had come to an end.

Slowly I reached for the keyboard and hovered above the keys wondering whether to reply.

I did reply.

Opportunity. Move forward two yards without deviation.

I slowly leaned back in the chair almost not breathing in anticipation.

When your waiting, twenty minutes can seem forever. Suddenly my phone beeped twice at me.

It was an alert.

I glanced at my phone and then at my monitor. There was a small red triangle above the almost microscopic image of Opportunity, which was a way of indicating that something had changed.

It had moved.

I had managed to make contact.

I jumped up from my seat punching the air and shouting out in excitement.

'That's how to do it. Yes.'

The other guys looked up from their monitors, smiled and then carried on with whatever they were doing leaving me to flop back into my seat.

It had taken over a week, but finally communications had been established with the rover, and now I wanted to see what information I could get from its decades of stored data.

I initiated the data transfer from Opportunity to us here at NASA and now all I had to wait.

Seems like I spent all my time waiting but this is the problem when the project you are trying to communicate with is a 68 million miles round-trip and the speed of the data transfer is similar to that of an old 20th century dial-up modem - or even less sometimes.

Later that day a message popped up on my monitor screen informing me that the data download had finished, so I immediately opened the file almost too excited to click the mouse button. But I needn't have been. It was empty.

I thought there must have been a problem with the download so I performed the procedure again but it was the same. No data.

It was getting close to home time, and my head felt like it was about to pop with all the ups and downs of the day, so I performed the download procedure for the third and last time before switching the monitor into standby and slowly pushing myself up onto my feet. I would leave the computer trying to download the data again while I went home and rested my aching head.

'See you in the morning' I said as I walked away. I definitely needed to get away if I was starting to talk to the bloody thing.

 

After a restful night at home I arrived back at my desk at NASA control room hopeful that the data had been received but to my disappointment it was the same as before.

Nothing.

I hovered my hands over the keyboard poised to type a command to the rover when a message alert popped up on screen. It was from Opportunity. I immediately opened the file and nearly fell off my chair when I read what it said.

Opportunity move.

I fell back into my seat with my mouth wide open.

Opportunity move.

Had Opportunity actually replied saying it had moved or was the reply just a part of my original sentence sent back to me?

I had to report this to John Curtin. This was getting weird.

'John. Yes. It's Dave in the control room.' I said nervously.

'Oh… Dave. What can I do for you? I'm a bit busy at the mome......' He tried to say before I cut him off mid-sentence.

'John. Something strange is happening here...with Opportunity.'

'What do you mean strange?' He replied and I could instantly hear the change in his tone of voice.

'It's easier if you come and have a look for yourself John.'

It couldn't have been 60 seconds before he was standing next to me in the control room.

'Right Dave. What have you got?' Said John slightly out of breath. 'What's been going on?'

I then spent the next few minutes explaining what had been happening over the last week or so as he listened nodding and stroking his chin every so often. When I finished, he remained quiet for a few seconds before pulling up a chair and sitting next to me.

'Right. Show me where it is now.' Said John pointing at the screen.

I began zooming in to Opportunity's co-ordinates and gradually the image of the old rover grew in size. The recent tracks in the red-brown Martian soil of my last command to move 2 yards were plainly visible, and just as I raised my finger to the screen to point them out to John, the rover began to move forward. At first it moved slowly, but within ten seconds or so it began to build up speed, not that the rover could ever move fast, but it was certainly moving as fast as it was able.

Both John and I did a double take between the Opportunity moving across the screen, and at each other’s astonished looks on our faces.

'Dave...is Opportunity responding to an earlier command?' Asked John wide eyed. 'And don't forget what we are seeing is at least twenty or thirty minutes old.'

'Err...No…No.' I replied, confused at what I was witnessing. 'I only gave it a command to move two yards without deviation…and it's already done that.'

John threw himself back in his chair.

'Well how the hell is it moving like that?' He said gesturing towards the monitor screen with an out raised arm, which he then pulled back and ran his hand through his short brown hair.

'Err...well...maybe it's malfunctioning?' I said shrugging my shoulders.

'Yes...yes...that's it.' John said sounding as confused as I felt. 'It's malfunctioning. I suppose it's not surprising considering what it's been through and how long it's been stuck under the Martian sand and in temperatures it was never designed for.'

'What shall we do?' I asked

'Look, keep monitoring it and it will either just stop when its batteries lose their power, thump into a large boulder or drop into a ravine. Ok?' Said John standing up from his chair next to me and turning to leave.

'Ok.' I replied still feeling a little confused how it was able to send a message to earth saying Opportunity move, but John was probably right and it was just using words from its data banks, or part of my message had been relayed back somehow.

 

Over the next few hours I monitored Opportunity closely and John was right, because it wasn't long before it slowed right down after travelling only 150 yards or so and finally coming to a stop. The path it had moved was a near perfect straight line, which pointed to the fact that it must be faulty in some way and was just trundling along until its batteries lost their power.

I still found it strange though, that the batteries had managed to charge at all with its solar panels still covered in sand and debris.

 

The next few days were such an anti-climax.

Nothing happened.

No movement from Opportunity, even the Mars weather was boring. Not a sand storm in sight.

Until...late Friday afternoon.

Opportunity move.

Another message saying the same thing.

I immediately replied.

Opportunity reverse two yards.

The idea behind my message was to see if it sent my communication back to me proving there was a malfunction with the data transfer system, and after waiting almost an hour I had a reply.

Opportunity move fshwnr vk lsjh skmpad

It was another garbled sentence mixed with two recognizable words. I replied again with my first message.

Opportunity reverse two yards.

Another hour passed...it was now time to go home. Friday night and most normal human beings of my age would have something planned that would usually involve alcohol, food and hopefully sex at the end of the night. But not me. No. I was trying to have a conversation with a decrepit tin-can of a space rover from over fifty years in the past.

Then… the reply arrived.

Nm Opportunity move forwasf tk fing orhnik

The sentence was still garbled but I could see what was happening. I needed to send the message again.

Who cares about going home? This is way more important.

Opportunity reverse two yards.

Within forty minutes I had the reply and at the same time my cell phone beeped with an alert and another alert flashed on my monitor screen.

Opportunity was on the move, and not backwards.

I couldn't believe my eyes when I read the reply. It was one of those moments that I will never forget.

No… Opportunity move forward to find origin.

The last few replies from Opportunity had been garbled because it was learning to speak English.

This tin-can from the past had just replied with a sentence and not only that, it had refused to do what I commanded, because it wanted to go forward and find the origin......whoever, or whatever that was.

I looked at the clock on my PC. It was 7pm and lifting my head above the monitor and looking around the room I could see that nearly everyone had left. There was only myself and two other guys in the room, but I knew I couldn't go home now.

This was way too important.

I needed to stay and keep an eye on Opportunity.

 

I spent Saturday and Sunday try to communicate with Opportunity and tracking its movement over the Martian surface until late Sunday night when I couldn't do it anymore. I was tired.

I smelled like I hadn’t changed my clothes for a week, and needed a shower and a shave, and some proper food. I think I had almost emptied the vending machine in the corridor of all its chocolate bars and biscuits.

 

Monday morning sat at my computer and I could see Opportunity had travelled nearly half a mile further since I last saw him. Him… I'd started calling Opportunity...Him. Well...He seemed like a Him to me.

Now I had to call John and tell him what had been going on. That would be interesting.

Within a couple of minutes of hanging up the phone he was at my side straining to look at Opportunity's progress across the Martian terrain.

 

'Dave. Why the hell didn't you call me sooner? This is incredible.' Said John with his eyes glued to my monitor screen.

'I wanted to be certain it was real John.' I replied.

'Well this certainly looks real to me. Do we know how it's doing it? Why it's doing it? Where it's going?'

'Err. No...No...And… No.' I said leaning back in my chair as John turned his stare from the screen to me.

'Well Dave, we sure as hell need to find out.' He replied tapping the screen on his cell phone and putting it to his ear.

'Dieter. Listen. We have an issue with the rover… Opportunity.' Said John running his free hand through his hair.

From that moment on, half the control room was put on the Opportunity project, and we spent all our time trying to find out what was going on. There were a lot of intelligent people, a lot more intelligent than me, trying to find out how it was doing what it was doing.

 

Over the coming days many theories were put forward but the one that was acceptable to most of the guys was a malfunction within the charging circuit, and too be honest it was probably the most likely, but the one thing no-one could answer was why and how Opportunity had replied the way it did. I mean...its reply was like that of rebellious teenager.

A decision was made to use Opportunity's cameras to look for any signs of damage to the rover. The cameras would be used to study the main body, extendable appendages, solar panels and rolling chassis with a view to trying to determine if any damage had been caused by the huge storm that originally put it out of action all those decades ago or impacts from micro-meteors falling from outer space. They could cause some serious damage even though their size could range from microscopic to the size of a golf ball.

All the time we were trying to figure out what was going on, Opportunity was still moving along the Martian surface at a constant speed of 0.3 inches per second, and that includes during the dark times of the Martian night, which was causing a lot of head scratching because how did the batteries manage to maintain their power without the sunlight required to charge them?

 

'Hey.' Came an excited cry from across the control room. It was one of the researchers working on the project. 'Have you seen this?' He said jumping to his feet and pointing frantically at his monitor screen.

I almost sprinted over to his work area which was about ten yards away trying not to trip over the wheeled office chairs at each work-bay on the way.

'What.' I panted. 'Show me.'

'Here. Look.' He said pointing to what looked like a brown splodge of something unmentionable clinging to the underside of the solar arrays. 'And here. And here. Here. Here. It's all over the place, Look.'

He was right and the more we studied the image the more of the brown splodge we could see.

'The image is from the front hazcam right?' I asked glancing at him and then back at the screen.

'Yep. Hahum.' He confirmed with a nod of his head.

'Can we try the rear hazcam?'

'Of course.' He said leaning forward on his desk and within a couple of clicks of his mouse we were looking at the underside from the rear of Opportunity.

'Look.' I said using my finger to point at the brown goo. 'It's not just on the solar panels. It's all over the wiring...And look at this.'

We both bent forward towards the screen to try and get a better look at what we were witnessing.

'It's clumped around all the wiring where it enters the main body of the rover.' Said the researcher peering through his black rimmed glasses. 'Do you think it's got inside?'

We both stood up and looked at each other with our mouths dropped open, and our eyes so wide they looked like they would pop out of our heads at any moment.

I flopped back down into the researchers chair with a thousand thoughts streaming through my mind.

Was this alien life? The first alien life anyone has ever seen. It's inside Opportunity and Opportunity is behaving extremely strangely. Could this brown splodge of Martian sludge be manipulating and operating Opportunity?

'Are you thinking what I'm thinking?' I said looking at the researcher who was now quite pale in the face.

'What are you thinking?' He replied raising his eyebrows and pushing his glasses back higher up his nose.

Neither of us said a word for a few seconds before I broke the silence.

'Little green men. Well, when I say little green I really mean...little brown splodge...Alien life.'

'Yep.' He said with the hint of a smirk starting to appear at the corner of his mouth.

I jumped to my feet and yelled Yeehaa while punching the air at least three times.

My screams of excitement made everyone in the control stop what they were doing and look over to where we were.

I jumped up onto the chair and then onto the desk waving my arms in the air.

'Guys. We have life. Not as we know it Jim but life none the less. Yeehaa.' I yelled again punching the air and almost losing my footing.

There was a sound of cheering and plenty of oohh's as they all rushed over, almost climbing over each other to look at the brown splodges on Opportunity highlighted on the researcher's monitor screen.

For the remainder of the day there was a feeling of amazement and excitement amongst everyone in the control room.

Understandably.

We had seen signs of life for the first time outside of our own sphere of humanity we call earth. Ok…so it's not walking around shouting, Hey look at me, because it appears to be a single cell entity much like bacteria and algae, but its life all the same. And that's amazing considering the human species has been looking for ET in space for about a hundred years now...without any luck.

 

The next day was a hive of activity at NASA as the word got round that we had found signs of microbial life, on Opportunity of all places. The control room was packed with just about everyone who had ever been involved in space projects over the last few decades and a few more besides, who I had never seen or heard of before.

There was a group of Astrobiologists and general biologists trying to study the brown splodge from the images we had received via the front and rear hazcams on Opportunity, and there is only so much you can learn from photographs but that didn't stop them analysing every scrap of data they could piece together, to try and identify if it resembled any known lifeform back here on good-old-earth. And to be honest I thought they were on a hiding to nothing really because they had so little to work with, but hey, no harm in trying.

Since the discovery of the splodge, I was calling it the splodge because no-one else had come up with a better name. The Astrobiologists were calling it an ELF, an Extra-terrestrial Life Form, which was pretty good I suppose, but I liked my name better, the splodge, and anyway, I discovered it so I can call it what I like. So...since the discovery of the splodge, we had accumulated many images from the hazcams and it had fallen to me to catalogue them and I had some of them tiled across my monitor, when something caught my eye.

The splodge appeared to be moving.

I quickly opened the video software, added the pictures in the correct order and pressed play.

The short video clearly showed the splodge moving along the cables of Opportunity but the video was not really long enough, so without involving the others just yet, I added all the available images right up to the most recent which had only just arrived.

The new much longer video, all be it still only twenty seconds long or so, showed all the separate pieces of the splodge moving along the cables and into the internal workings of Opportunity.

The splodge really was a new Martian lifeform worthy of some intense monitoring.

'Hey guys.' I called out without even looking up from my monitor screen. 'I think your gonna want to see this.'

The room went quiet and within a couple of seconds they had all congregated around my monitor.

I was playing the video over and over again with not a word being uttered by anyone.

John Curtin was the one to break the silence.

'Jesus.' He exclaimed pointing at my screen. 'That stuff's alive.'

From then on all hell broke loose with so much noise coming from everyone it sounded like a day at the super bowl with everyone talking at the same time.

'Quiet...Quiet.' Yelled Dieter Neuhofer. 'Everyone back to you workstations please. This changes nothing. Carry on with what you were doing. Ok'

I was instructed to continue with the images from Opportunity, making videos etc., and to inform him immediately if anything changed. That was great for a kid like me to be involved at the highest level in this discovery, the only problem was that the data was slow to arrive, so I had an awful lot of time on my hands. I put myself to good use by trying to figure out where Opportunity was headed. It was still slowly but surely, continuing in as straight a line as possible, but to where.

As hard as I studied the Martian surface there was nothing that was apparent...nothing that jumped out at me.

Where the hell was it going?

There had been no more words from Opportunity only pictures from its cameras so I decided to ask it where it was headed. No harm in trying.

Where is your destination?

Where are you going?

I thought I'd send two questions just in case it didn't understand the first, but as it happens it didn't matter because I didn't get a reply anyway.

It was almost time to end the day and go home for a much needed rest, but I had a little while before leaving so I decided to plot onto a map of Mars all of the rovers and landers from the 20th century, and the early part of the 21st century which didn't take that long to be honest. There was only twelve that I could find and that included three from the old USSR which I thought I would include even though their technology was extremely limited.

All done - home time for some R and R.

 

The following day we were all back at the control room bright and early, ready to begin another day studying the data from Opportunity, in a hope that it would give us some clue as to what the ELF, or the splodge was.

Some people thought it was a fungus, others thought that it was a bacteria, in truth… without actually being there on Mars, it was almost impossible to say without any certainty, but everyone had their own hypothesis as to how it ended up on Opportunity, and how it was able to operate the complex electrical and electronic systems on board. When I say operate, everyone was of the same mind that it was virtually impossible that the splodge was operating Opportunity as we understand it back here on earth, but more probable that it was enhancing or affecting the charging process and the flow of electricity through the circuitry somehow...as I understand it anyway.

Opportunity was still moving along at a steady pace, on a road to nowhere, as far as anyone could make out, but it kept trundling along in an almost straight line for as far as it could without having to make any course corrections due to rocks or boulders or steep inclines.

Over the coming days, everything remained pretty much the same as it had been since the discovery of the splodge, and I had accumulated enough images of it to determine that the separate blobs of splodge, now there's a truly scientific and technical term that I bet no-one has ever said at NASA, blobs of splodge, that they were all definitely moving slowly and surely along the cables, tubes and pipework of Opportunity, and making their way inside the external chassis assembly to where all the control systems and electronics were housed.

The question is why? To what end? How?

All these questions...and not a single answer.

 

Weeks and months passed with very little new information from Opportunity, or from the researchers here on earth. Everyone had come to accept that a new lifeform had embedded itself onto, and inside Opportunity, and was somehow influencing its operation, but no-one had come up with a credible hypothesis, apart from me that is, and no-one liked my theory of little green men, so they continued their research, trying their best to humour me, the student in the corner.

Months progressed into years, and the project was downgraded so that just a couple of people were left doing research, of which I was one. I would always try to treat every day the same, with the thought and excitement of something being discovered or understood for the first time, but the longer Opportunity continued on its seemingly never-ending quest in an almost straight line to where? No-one knew, or could, work it out.

Until.

One day it all became obvious. To me at least.

'The face.' I said loud enough for the other guys in the control room to hear me. Mind you, there was only two others and I think both of those were talking to someone on their cell phones.

'Of course why didn't I think of it earlier?'

'Dave...everything Ok?' asked one of the guys across the room holding his cell phone to his chest and standing up to get my attention.

'Yeh...Yes. No problem Zak.' I replied. 'I just had an idea that's all.'

'Ok.' He said sitting back down and immediately putting his cell back to his ear and continuing his obviously riveting conversation.

It had been staring me in the face for weeks, for months…..and everyone else in the control room.

Opportunity had been heading almost due north for years now, about six years actually and it was about to enter the Cydonia region...and what's in the Cydonia region?

The Face.

The Face had been talked about for nearly a hundred years since it was first discovered and only recently had been discounted as nothing more than a rock formation that just happened to look a bit like a human face.

 I watched intently for the next few days as Opportunity entered the Cydonia region hoping, praying that something would happen...and it did.

Opportunity stopped.

Opportunity hadn't stopped moving for just over six years. Ok, it had slowed down as it manoeuvred around obstacles but it had never stopped. Ever.

Why had it stopped?

 

Opportunity remained stationary for weeks without any return communication to us down here at NASA. I must have written dozens of communications and texts to it asking everything from, Why have you stopped? To, Are you being controlled by an alien entity? Which, by the way, I know sounds like something someone out of the 1960's television show, Star Trek, would say, but how else would you say it?

But it didn't matter how I formed my questions, Opportunity couldn't or wouldn't answer.

 

The project had already been downgraded from High Priority to Low Priority a couple of years ago, and now it was in danger of being shut down completely if we couldn't re-establish communication with Opportunity, or it did something out of the ordinary, as if travelling 1550 miles along the surface of another planet and being controlled by an alien lifeform wasn't out of the ordinary enough. But. And it's a big BUT, we all know that scientific exploration like this has to be funded and if the venture doesn't grab the people’s attention then money is directed elsewhere, to something that is deemed more attractive to the public. Like the latest NASA project to finally send manned missions to Mars. How long has NASA been wanting to do that? Since the late 20th century almost one hundred years ago. And It's only now the money has been made available, in part due to Opportunity, but now it has finished its journey, it can be pushed aside for something new and exciting, like men on Mars.

Which is exactly what happened.

Exactly ninety days after Opportunity stopped moving at the base of the Cydonia Mesa known as The Face, our project was closed and Opportunity declared dead, again. Because I was the one that had first found the data showing that Opportunity had moved from its original position at Perseverance Valley over six years ago, I was tasked with monitoring it, again, just in case it came back to life and began to move, again.

 

So after all the excitement of the last few years I was relegated back to my cupboard, sorry, my office, where it all began, and my career which had been on an upward surge was back down to earth with a bump, and I was now ploughing my way through high-def images of Saturn's moon Enceladus, where NASA’s had a reconnaissance orbiter for the last couple of years, sending back data for people like me to wade through hoping to find something different.

 

Late in 2077, I'll never forget it. It's one of those moments that sticks in your mind forever, like your first kiss, or your first job. I was at my desk taking a sip of coffee bought from NASA's newly refurbished cafe, looking at the latest image of Opportunity on Mars, when my cell phone beeped at me.

Nothing unusual about that. My cell phone beeps at me all the time, except this was different. I nearly dropped my cappuccino with chocolate sprinkles and real cream, into my lap.

It was an alert from Opportunity.

I slammed my coffee down without thinking, spilling it all over the desk. I logged into the software that receives data from the rover and there it was. A message from Opportunity.

All it said was, Watch.

Immediately I typed a return message.

Watch what?

Thirty minutes waiting for the reply seemed like a lifetime but thankfully it came.

Mars.

I threw myself back in my chair.

Mars. Watch what on Mars? I shouted out. Mars is a big place.

Shuffling my chair closer to the desk I opened the real-time image of Mars. We called it real-time, but it could be anything from 20 minutes to 40 minutes-ish old, depending on where Mars was relative to Earth, and at that moment it was approximately 30 minutes. I spun the image of Mars round this way and that on the screen, but nothing. I waited and waited, but still nothing until I happened to spin past the Face and where Opportunity was located since it had stopped moving.

I couldn't believe it.

The eyes of the face were lit-up… like car headlights in the night… getting brighter and brighter.

Suddenly the door to my cupboard burst open and Phil Demski almost fell through the doorway.

'Oh my god Dave.' He panted. 'Have you heard?'

I thought he meant the eyes shining bright on the Face of Mars.

'Yes. I can see.' I said smiling from ear to ear. 'Look.'

He bent over and looked at my screen.

'No not that. But that is amazing. No… All the old landers and rovers are either moving or trying to communicate with us.'

'What?' I replied with a totally confused look on my face.

'Yes. Come on.' He said excitedly waving his arm for me to follow him.

We half-walked, half-ran along the corridor to the control room, which was so full of people we struggled to get through the door.

We stood for a second bobbing our heads from side to side trying to catch a glimpse of the images on the FLM, but I couldn't see, so I pushed my way through until I found myself next to John Curtin.

We were both lost for words as we studied the rotating image of Mars, dotted with red flashing warning triangles of where all the old rovers were located, and streams of data pouring in from all of them at the same time.

'John.' I said quietly as I turned my head to look at him. 'What the hell is going on?'

'Dave. Dave.' He replied with his eyes still fixed firmly on the FLM. 'All of them have begun to work again. Every single one. Even the Russian ones.'

'How?' I asked still completely confused.

John turned towards me.

'Look… Look at this.' He said puling me over to look at a monitor next to where we were standing. 'Look. It's the ALF, (the Alien Life Form), it’s all over them. Everywhere. Like on Opportunity.'

He scrolled through dozens of images sent back from the rovers and landers and there it was. The brown splodge. Everywhere.

'We started to receive data from some of the old craft almost as soon as the eyes in the Face became active. Somehow the Face becoming active has alerted or communicated with the ALF all over the planet. Now all the old spacecraft have begun to work again, just as Opportunity did.'

'This, this means......' I stuttered. 'This means the brown splodge, the ALF is complex life not just a pile of slime.'

'Yep. Sure does.' Replied John looking back at the FLM with a huge smile on his face.

 

That day back in 2077 changed everything.

We are still collecting data from all the antique rovers and landers and monitoring their movements.

Obviously not all of them were able to move but the ones that could, did, and are still moving now, 30 years later.

I have been promoted to director of NASA, which back then I could never have imagined in my wildest dreams, and I am still watching Opportunity and collecting data.

Old habits die hard.

An incredible thing about the rovers that are moving across the Martian landscape is…they are all heading in the same direction. It looks like they are all making their way towards the Face and where Opportunity is still located.

What will happen when they all get there? No-one knows. Maybe they will all have a party, but one thing's for sure.

 

There is definitely life on Mars.

 

The End.