16 September 2099 AD – Orbit of Europa, Moon of Jupiter
‘This is Horizon Orbiter calling the Horizon Descent Probe. Please transmit your amended descent trajectory.’
‘This is the Horizon Descent Probe. Our Europa altitude is seventy-five kilometres, angle of insertion six point two degrees. We should be touching down in approximately fifteen minutes. We’re getting busy with the manual thrusters.’
‘Congratulations team, you’re making history.’
Above the Orbiter, Jupiter was beginning to emerge from behind Europa. The gas giant was nearly seven hundred thousand kilometres away from them, but the thick belt of liquid metallic hydrogen that formed the huge planet’s magnetosphere was sending out an electrical field that was strong enough to break up the radio signal between the two craft. As the orange gas giant loomed more and more over Europa’s horizon, Robert Donnelly felt his attention being drawn away from the task at hand. His gaze fixed on the eye of a huge storm just above Jupiter’s equatorial region. It seemed as though the clouds up there were moving ever so slowly, yet he knew that he was being deceived by sheer distance. Those winds would be gusting at about six hundred kilometres an hour.
Nothing mankind had sent into those winds had ever come out.
Somewhere in the gassy atmosphere of the giant planet were the many broken fragments of the Galileo Probe which was swallowed up by the atmosphere in 1995, and the Unity Atmospherics Module, a futile attempt to return samples of Jupiter’s atmosphere to Earth, which failed to escape Jupiter’s ferocious atmosphere in 2066.
Eleanor’s crackly voice from the Descent Probe came over the radio, snapping Robert out of his trance.
‘Okay,’ she said, ‘you’re beginning to break up. How long are you boys gonna be round the dark side.’
‘We’ll be out of radio contact from you for three hours twenty minutes, so you be sure to take a lot of pictures when you get down to the surface. We need to have something to send home to Uncle Sam. “One small step...” and all that stuff. And try to get some footage. Sorry we’re not going to be around for the touchdown.’
‘Oh don’t worry; we’ve got this thing licked,’ laughed Eleanor, ‘Bob flew this thing in the simulator a couple of billion times. The view from here is absolutely stunning by the way. The glacial striations on the surface are fascinating. I’m no geologist but the ridges are a lot higher than I was expecting. I’m not gonna forget this in a hurry. Oh…okay, we’re losing you. I guess we’ll see you on the other side.’
‘Good luck with the landing,’ said Robert, who was rather embarrassed to feel a tear rolling down his cheek, ‘we’ll be thinking of you.’
There was no response from Eleanor. The descent probe had dipped below Europa’s horizon, and there would be no contact with them until the Orbiter had gone all the way around the icy moon.
