Post #3880852

This totally snuck up on me, but as mentioned in today’s PBS Space Time, today marks 50 years since the first human landing on Mars. Six Soyuz launches in 1975 lofted tanks of uranyl chloride/heavy water to (inconveniently) low earth orbit where Apollo 24 and 25 boosted half of them Marsward. Apollo 27 and its nuclear saltwater thruster delivered an American, Australian and Soviet crew to Phobos Base on 16 July 1976. Against orders the crew played an excruciatingly long game of low-gravity two-up to choose which of them won the chance to make a forbidden landing. Janel O’Malley became the first woman to set foot on another planet, sabotaging her lander’s heaters to choose her own conclusion to the mission rather than starvation or suffocation. When the return fuel arrived, her crew mates erected a memorial at the landing site before returning her to earth. Commander LeBrayne Johnson still resides on Phobos, aged ninety-one. Cosmonaut Valentina Ivanova was tragically lost saving the lives of the crew of Apollo 40, in 1980. #Tootfic #MicroFiction #PowerOnStoryToot #TodayInHerstory