Cumbrian Sky

Well here we are... Friday evening in the UK, and this afternoon I finished work for the long Bank Holiday weekend. But this weekend will be anything but relaxing, of course, because Sunday night PHOENIX - hopefully - lands on Mars, so I'll be spending all day Saturday wishing it was Sunday, and after waking up on Sunday I'll be impatiently counting down the hours until NASA TV coverage of the landing starts, then I'll sit at my computer and settle down to just watch what happens. By the time Sunday truly turns into Monday we'll know Phoenix's fate, and by breakfast on Monday we'll either be celebrating what happened, or mourning what might have been.

Sitting here witing this it's strange to think that the next time I go into work, the world - at least, the world of the spaceflight enthusiast like me - will have changed. Only slightly, only subtly changed, but definitely changed. We'll either live in a world where Everything Went Right, and the joyous cries and whoops and back-slapping of the men and womein in the Phoenix control room told us that a spaceprobe had landed succesfully in the martian arctic, and soon after set about studying the fascinating environment there, photographing its landscape and continuing the ongoing quest to find life on Mars; a world where people can go online and, as they have done for the past 4 years, enjoy looking at brand new images of Mars just a day, perhaps even just an hour, old, some of them showing a shrunken Sun surrounded by glowing haloes of light and flanked by colourful, mini-rainbow martian "sundogs"; a world where scientists and space enthusiasts alike are waiting for results to come back from the lander's laboratories, microscope and other instruments, and hoping against hope that those results whisper "There was life here..." or even "There IS life here..."

... or we'll live in a world where Something Went Wrong, and instead of seeing the techs and engineers leaping into the air and swapping "High Fives" they sat still, staring at their screens, eyes brimming with tears of frustration, disbelief and anger; a world where instead of drooling over images of the martian arctic's plains and sky we stare glassy-eyed at HiRISE images of the predicted landing zone, looking for some clue as to what happened, why Phoenix suddenly went silent...

I am seriously nervous about the landing now, I can't help it. And I know that's a bit silly really - there's absolutely nothing Ican do to affect the landing, and it's not as if I have any personal stake in the mission... I'm just an observer - but I can't help it. I live this stuff, it's what I do and who I am, and my stomach is already tying itself up in more knots than a politician asked for a straight answer to a difficult question. I wish it was Sunday night right now... but I know that when Sunday night comes I'll wish it hadn't, that Landing Day was still hours or days away, because I'll know that if anything goes wrong I'll be gutted, absolutely, totally gutted...

Anyway, I wrote something about Phoenix's final approach and arrival, which I think... I hope... sums up what's happening right now. I hope you like it. If you do, feel free to drop me a line. If you don't like it, well, tough. This is my blog! :-)

Phoenix I was named, and tomorrow

I will finally taste and fly in flame!

Screaming through the martian sky, the light

of my arrival will be bright enough

to put to shame the twin moons’ gloomy glow,

and should those weary rovers far below me

lift their dust-dimmed eyes towards the stars

they’ll see me slicing through their heaven, far

brighter and more glorious than any mere meteor.

And I, wrapped in great flapping sheets

of flame – Barsoom’s own Beowulf, riding

the raging dragon of Entry and Descent –

will cry out loudly “I am here!”

I do not fear the landing; nor do I waste

my time with worries of the million ways

my mayfly life could end before I even reach

the frozenground. If I fail, my broken body found

a hundred years from now,

an almost-not-there stain upon Green Valley’s

barren floor my story will still be

one of victory, for I was never meant to fly;

if Fate had smiled on others meant

to touch the face of Mars I would not even

have been born, and my eyes and hands

and feet would all have flown elsewhere.

But here I am! And as Mars looms ever larger

up ahead my dream-dulled head begins

to fill with thoughts of with what I’ll see

tomorrow, when these gritty, sleep-filled eyes

of mine awake and open for the first time.

An endless open plain of ochre stone, painfully

bare, with just a lonely, frost-fringed rock

placed here and there to catch my roving eye?

Or will great boulders stand nearby,

high enough to hide the far horizon from

my view? I’ll know this, and more, soon…

One thing I will never know is

The brittle beauty of a starry martian sky.

From my valley home, so close to the gateau-layered pole,

Sol will circle me like a long lost bird;

never rising, neversetting,

a molten metal ball rolling ‘round the rim

of my world as I stand alone

in the land of the Shrunken Midnight Sun,

watching my shadow sweep around me

for hour after endless, endless hour.

I shall be a sundial, marking time until I die. 

Before then, my faithful friends, I long to show you wonders!

But if my flight ends in Mars’ air, and no word

is heard from me again then promise me you’ll send

another in my place, for there are secrets

and surprises here that cry out to be found,

and though I hope to dig beneath the frigid ground

to touch and taste the water there I know

Mars has destroyed more of my kind

than it has granted life. So lift your eyes

up to the sky, and as these final tortuous hours tick by

wish me nothing more than peace, and

keep me company as I sleep.

© Stuart Atkinson 2008

By the way, my great friend Rui - the man behind the spacEurope blog that has covered the Phoenix mission so uniquely and loyally - has done me the great honour of putting my poem up on his site, with an unusual twist... Go take a look...

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