Shadow Mission
James R. Muri
Copyright, 1996
"All right, thanks, Dave." Keith nodded towards Dave. He turned to the small group sitting at their consoles and keyboards in the quiet, isolated back room in Mexico City.
"Any glitches yet?" he asked, knowing there were none, as anything found would have been instantly announced. Shaking heads confirmed this certainty.
"Ok, then. Fifteen minutes until Flashlight datalink test sequence Alpha One, thirty minutes to Phantom mode enable."
More than four years earlier the plan had taken root in both technological and decision form. The Narrow Field of View camera on Mars Observer would be modified during final assembly by a hand-picked crew, augmented with the Shadow Mission special package. All telemetry readouts would match those of the original camera, so that the usual mission conrol staff wouldn't know the difference. In addition the package would mass the same, use the same power feeds. This required remarkable technical agility on the part of the design staff, but it was done.
Now, nearly two years after launch, Mars Observer was in the final weeks of its approach to Mars. Its mission was to photograph Mars, without, according to NASA, paying any special attention to Cydonia. Cydonia was a region on Mars where a very controversial sequence of photos by Viking, in 1976, had been interpreted as possibly showing artificial structures. The famous "Face on Mars" and its close-by "city" and "pyramid" was, to many, the most tantalizingly important puzzle in the universe, and they could not understand why NASA was so cavalierly ignoring it when they had the right tool to check it out thoroughly en route.
NASA's official line was that even though Mars Observer had remarkable capability to resolve to much finer detail than the Viking images, no special effort would be made concerning Cydonia unless other "mission objecives" had been fulfilled. That was when the plot was hatched by the seven occupants of the control center in Mexico City. It was housed in the largest business park, the top story of one of the busiest buildings. The sign outside said Conroy Business Management Consulting Services, Inc. The secretary took phone calls, made apologies. The nest of satellite dishes and strange-looking antennas on the roof was a necessity for the well-connected Business Management Consulting Service.
Fourteen million dollars had been raised, spent, another ten. JPL's top scientists' brains had been picked, patiently and cautiously, over drinks, golf and other diversions, to help with the project. One major technology borrowed from them was the optical datalink, an idea that had been proposed for the Thousand Astronomical Unit project. It was a highly coherent laser, capable of transmitting data back from a hundred billion miles away from Earth, a distance so vast that the laser light would take almost a week to get back. Flashlight was a much smaller, lower-powered version of that. Another was a very compact camera control system that allowed joystick aiming on Earth and then lock-on to any area that had contrasting electromagnetic energy values. This came from the Department of Defense in the form of Maverick missile seeker technology, but improved in both sensitivity and stability.
Everything seemed to be working, according to the encoded telemetry they'd designed to tell them just that.
"We have datalink," Dave announced with a rise of excitement in his voice. "Laser function nominal, temperature nominal, datarate nominal at T2. Flashlight appears to be a Go."
There were grins, handshakes, breaths still being held. If it all held for another fifteen minutes - the first image came across, almost abruptly. Mars sprang onto the oversized monitor they'd indulged themselves with, bright red, three quarters full against a black background, breathtaking.
Time marched on. Second by second, the laser spewed millions of bits of data Earthward. Finally, fifteen minutes from first acquisition, Dave spoke again. "Set Phantom Mode Enable to Automatic."
Karen simply tripped the red switch on her console. Nothing else. In minutes the command would reach Mars Observer, followed by their replacement back-door platform control system, and when the fuel tanks were pressurized for the stabilization burn, expected telemetry would instantly cease.
They were committed.
Six hours and thirty-five minutes later NASA mission control released the news that there was an "anomaly" in the mission profile. Eight hours later it was announced that telemetry with Mars Observer seemed to have been lost, probably as a result of an engine or fuel tank malfunction. But they were going to do everything they could to recover the mission.
Back in Mexico City Keith sent half the crew away to rest. "It's going to be a long few months, now, ladies and gentlemen. Shadow Mission is operating as planned. Rest now, while you can, because when you get back we begin to try to unravel this mystery on Cydonia. But first, tonight, we're going let this little snooper run on autopilot and starting at seven in my apartment we're going to sip a little Champagne and tequila and whatever else pours from a bottle, and thank the American Taxpayer for this wonderful opportunity."
There were quiet cheers, back clappings, and sighs of relief.
Shadow Mission was under weigh. The American Taxpayer was going to get
a lot more for his money than he knew.
Shelly came to Keith five weeks later. Mars Observer was performing flawlessly, raising goosebumps almost daily with images of Cydonia and other sites that had been discovered.
"Keith, I've found something pretty puzzling. You remember when we downloaded the control code from MO? There's something - odd."
Keith took her over to a table, poured some coffee. "What?" They sat, she pulled a three-inch thick printout of code from her carrying case.
Keith laughed, held up his hands. "Please, Shelly. Have mercy! Just tell me what you found."
She smiled. Keith knew how to run a mission, but get him near code . . . "The way I read this, we uplinked our system overrides just in time. The existing tank re-pressurization algorithms would have resulted in catastrophic failures of the tanks, Keith. Probably just hours after our planned takeover."
Keith sipped, thought. Coincidence? The last critical maneuver before the mission could begin? He thought some more. All that enroute data collection, all that went fine. Even long-range looks at Mars. He looked back at her. "And? What else?"
She raised an eyebrow. "Well, you figure it out, Keith. All that too-certain 'We Know Best' crap from them, the odd lack of curiosity at high levels, the work-a-day pace of the mission planners. Someone knew, Keith. This was no accident. So, plainly - at least to me - someone knows more about Cydonia than they're letting on. And this mission was supposed to fail to keep it a secret, a sort of Oh Well, We Tried appeasement thing. Mars Observer was a deception operation."
He nodded. "Going on twenty years since Viking. We've had these pictures for that long, and whatever else we've had, and we haven't tried to go back sooner. Nearly twenty years. I guess they figured they'd have to put on a butt-covering show, appear to make an attempt."
Shelly smiled. "They didn't figure on a bunch of hijackers taking over, Keith. Now we've got this -" she gestured at the images posted all over the walls - "to take to the world. Not to mention hundreds of terabytes of other imagery and sensor data. My God, Keith, this is going to change a lot of attitudes about a lot of things!"
Keith knew. "And probably start new wars, new persecutions, new religions. But knowledge is knowledge, and belongs to us all. What we do with it, well, that's how you sort out the humans from the animals. In another couple of months and we'll have all the sun angles we want, all the different aspects we want. Then it'll be time for Lazarus."
Operation Lazarus began less than two months later. A notice appeared in all the major papers in the world:
MARS OBSERVER TO COME BACK ON LINE AT NOON GMT, TOMORROW
The simple paragraph under the story announced to all the world's interested readers, and especially listeners and folks with the ability to download the impending new data, the frequencies and protocols needed to be able to confirm that MO was indeed alive. For at least six weeks all signals at those frequencies would consist of imagery in ordinary .gif format, suitable for anyone with a personal computer to view. Readers were told they could expect a large number of "Face" and other related images. A number of web pages and ftp sites was listed where anyone could download the decode algorithms, or download a variety of programs which would permit direct viewing of the imagery as it was coming in.
Thousands of internet service providers sent out global emailings offering direct feeds to anyone who would log on and wanted it, and some even set up data repositories to store the anticipated downlinked images.
Many interviews at NASA were conducted in time for the late night news, all of the talking heads scoffing at the hoax, stalling, buying time, hoping against hope.
The situation was completely out of control, and even if they had any possibility of regaining control, there wasn't enough time to find the perpetrators and stop the impending data hemorrhage. The internet was global, so there was no way to shut it all down. Everyone was going to find out.
Exactly on time, on schedule, the river of data began to flow. For thirty-six hours, the world was stunned at what they saw. Then, slowly at first, with a whimper, while imagery spewed relentlessly Earthward from Mars, the sorting out of the humans from the animals began.
* * * Author's postscript: You can read the history of Mars Observer on a large number of NASA approved - and some not approved - web sites. Just do a search for Mars, or NASA, and go from there. You may find complete, day-by-day press releases on MO by NASA hard to find in complete form, but it's worth looking for. But if you like pictures, you might try looking first Here.
We, as a people, should all apologize for the over two-decade delay in following these up. And we should probably be asking someone why. We didn't lack the budget, we didn't lack the technology, we had these images. Why didn't we go back? Why is there still no planned followup mission with at least a major objective of closely re-examining this area with adequate sensors?
If you get morbidly curious, you might wish to explore the remarkable lack of success in Mars missions. Go back to the first efforts, then follow up to the present time. The Russians just put their most recent in the drink off Australia. We have two either enroute or about to be launched. See if you can figure out how successful they will be. Check NASA information on Mars Surveyor and Martian Rover missions to see if either of these two missions has the capability to explore what Viking did, twenty years ago, with comparatively stone-age technology. Then, wonder if they'll even get the chance.
Finally, wonder why.
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