Transmission #36 - Sailing Winds Made of Light
Transmission from: Phillip van Vogt (44), flight director of the Asbolus Light Sail Mission to Alpha Centauri.
Earth Received Time: 6 February 2325 11:13:02 UT
I’ve spent a career sailing winds made of light and navigating gravitational currents. Tomorrow, I reach Proxima Centauri b. Or, at least, the satellite I built will reach that distant shore. Like drone pilots of old, I feel as though I journey with my craft. No watch from a crow’s nest just a set of monitors in mission control. When not on watch, I wander the halls of the spaceflight center. While the probe sailed through interstellar space, I studied data from Mercury and Venus, hoping to understand what I’ll see when we turn cameras toward a phase-locked world orbiting a red dwarf star. Budget cuts came, as they do. Signals terminated and I felt alone, adrift in a black sea as the probe itself no doubt did. New grants were written and we frantically sent signals to the calculated coordinates. A sigh of relief when the answer arrived. In mission control now. The monitors turn on. I long to jump in the water and rush to that distant shore. We see rocks and more rocks, so like Mercury. Then a puff of white. Is that a cloud hugging a distant mountain peak? I watch a world roll below me that celebrates a New Year every eleven days. A tantalizing twinkle here and a glint there. Could it be crystals, or dare I even hope for water? A hint of green. Forest or just copper salts? I sigh and smile. More data here than I can analyze in the twilight of my career, but plenty here for students and younger colleagues. They’ll make a career of messages sent back from a tiny bottle sent adrift on a shimmering sail.
Phillip van Vogt is a planetary scientist and physicist based on who obtained his PhD from the Ganymede Institute of Mining and Technology. He’s especially known for his work studying Mercury’s Caloris Planitia and his tireless support of Asbolus Light Sail Mission from the Martian Institute of Exoplanet Research.
Transmission received via David Lee Summers
