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MARS EXPLORATION AND
GRAVITON ELLIPSE IN [#128 ONE SMALL STEP] |
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Ares IV was one of the early Mars missions, manned by John Kelly, Rose Kumagawa and Andrei Novakovich. The surviving astronauts were stranded on the surface of Mars for two weeks before a rescue ship arrived. The command module was 46 metres long and weighed 92 metric tons, and was powered by a third generation ion drive and equipped with a transpectral imager. As they approached the completion of their mission, Kelly reported an object closing on his position, then the command module disappeared from NASA's LIDAR scopes. NASA received Kelly's last telemetry at 0922 hours on 19th October 2032. Everyone assumed he was killed instantly, but he was actually still alive inside the Ares IV within the ellipse through until 25th October and he kept on taking scientific readings until his death. The incident almost derailed the Mars program. In 2376, USS Voyager encounters the very same spatial phenomenon - a huge mass of subspace energy which is attracted to objects that emit electromagnetic energy. It is known to Federation science as a graviton ellipse. It reads as a level-9 gravimetric distortion with 30 million terajoules of subspace energy. Its Borg designation is Spatial Anomaly 521; the Borg developed shields to get through the gravimetric currents with the intention of dissipating it from within. According to the Federation database, the graviton ellipse travels through subspace, emerging occasionally without warning.
on 19th October 2032, the Ares IV module, commanded by Lt. John Kelly, was lost while orbiting Mars; [#128 One Small Step] |
in 2376, USS Voyager encounters the graviton ellipse which had swallowed up the Ares IV
[#128 One Small Step] |
Graviton ellipses have been observed only a handful of times. There are more than 2.8 billion compounds in its core, including several synthetic alloys native to Sector 001 (Earth's home sector), as well as asteroid fragments, pieces of vessels and matter from every quadrant of the galaxy. The chemical interactions within the anomaly create a primitive atmosphere. They find an ore sample that suggests the possibility of a metallic lifeform, something that has always been speculated about.
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| in Voyager's astrometrics lab, Paris and Chakotay take in the last recording made by Lt. Kelly, [#128 One Small Step] |
An away team, consisting of Chakotay, Seven and Paris, takes the Delta Flyer into the graviton ellipse in order to retrieve the Ares IV command module, but when Janeway learns that a dark matter asteroid is pulling the mass of energy toward it she orders the away team to abort the mission. Chakotay disobeys, and tries to bring the module back with them, but the weight of the Ares IV inhibits their swift escape, and the Delta Flyer is unable to escape before impact. Chakotay is injured and the Delta Flyer is damaged. With the engines down and shields offline, the away team now has only two hours before the mass of energy returns to subspace.
the Delta Flyer tries to tractor the Ares IV but ends up drifting without engine power
Lt. John Kelly, [#128 One Small Step] |
Seven beams to the Ares IV to remove its ion distributor so as to channel warp plasma and thereby supply power to the Delta Flyer. While there, she plays back Kelly's logs. They learn that he lived for many more days before his life support system ran out. During that time, he saw other spacecraft within the mass and realised that the human race was not alone in the galaxy. |
Seven retrieves the ion distributor and beams Kelly's body back with her to the Delta Flyer. The ion distributor is installed within the Delta Flyer's. Voyager rescues the Delta Flyer as the graviton ellipse begins to retreat into subspace. With the away team safely back on Voyager, the crew pay their respects to Lieutenant John Kelly and send his body into space.
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| Janeway: "Centuries ago mankind sent its first wave of explorers into that void, astronauts like Mr Kelly. They paved the way for the first colonies, the first starships for those of us who've made space our home. We commend the spirit and the bravery of Lieutenant John Mark Kelly as we commit his body to space. He will not be forgotten." Seven: "In a sense, this desire to explore was not unlike a quest for perfection. His contribution helped secure humanity's future and in some ways my own." |
| 4 screenshots above: [#128 One Small Step] |
A graviton ellipse. Is that a real thing? I don't know. Gravitons are subatomic particles that are hypothetical at the moment. They are thought to be the particles that create the force of gravity. According to the principles of quantum theory, forces are mediated by the action of particles, called exchange particles. The detail is as follows: A repulsive force between two magnets, for example, is created by the constant exchange of photons between the magnets. This idea gives rise to a simple mental picture. Imagine two skaters standing on a frozen lake. If they toss a baseball back and forth, they will slowly begin to move away from one another due to recoil as they alternately toss and catch the ball. Attractive forces can also be understood in terms of the exchange of particles, although the "mental picture" is not quite as simple as two ice skaters playing catch. Photons are particles of electromagnetic radiation that serve as the exchange particles for electromagnetic forces, both attractive and repulsive. Gravitons are particles of gravitational radiation that serve as the exchange particles responsible for the force of gravity. It may strike you as ironic that gravitons are thought to have no mass.
Nobody has ever detected a graviton, but we strongly suspect that they exist. A "graviton ellipse" is just a term that we made up. It sounded kind of cool and potentially dangerous and threatening, and I imagined it would be a phenomenon involving some clumps of these gravitons, fairly intense, that could be a real threat to a spacecraft, that could conceivably warp space.
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Behind-the-scenes: [One Small Step]
