LIFE ON ‘MARS’
IF AN EMERGENCY STRIKES ON MARS, HELP OR EXTRA SUPPLIES WILL TAKE MONTHS TO ARRIVE
THE Mars weather is beautiful today and an astronaut is about to suffocate to death under the cloudless blue sky.
The trouble starts after three crew members leave the safety of the Hab, their pressurised six-person living station, and venture outside to do some routine work. They trudge along in 16kg spacesuits, breathing air pumped by fan and watching the jagged, red landscape through their fishbowl-like glass helmets.
As they head back to the station one astronaut, Aga Pokrywka, begins acting strangely. Her movements are sluggish. She stops walking.
The radio crackles. “Aga, are you all right?” asks the crew’s commander, Sionade Robinson. The Hab is only a few dozen metres away, but Aga can’t seem to go further. She collapses on the red clay.
Robert Turner, the crew’s medical officer, radios the Hab, “Astronaut down, astronaut down!”
The three crew members inside begin emergency protocols. Two don spacesuits, grab a stretcher and enter the airlock. They must wait five painstaking minutes for the air pressure to adjust. If they don’t, they might be torn apart when they step into Mars’ thin atmosphere.
After the agonising wait ends, the rescue party rushes to Aga and rolls her on to the stretcher. They
