Through The Eyes Of A Mars Rover
by Aisha Rigert
Looking out the window of its capsule, the Mars rover rolled its wheels back and forth. Two hundred eleven days and forty-seven minutes had passed since the rover had left Earth. At first, the ride had been fun, but after a month of the same scenery passing by the windows, the rover had started to be lonely. He couldn't wait until he landed.
He started to daydream: a parachute would carry him to the ground and then he would tip his head to release the parachute into the air. After watching the parachute billow away (to the sounds of twinkling stars) he would zoom towards a giant gold nugget.
Suddenly, the rover was jolted out of his dream world by a wave of heat. He pressed the button that was supposed to activate the heat shield. It didn't seem to make any difference. Ugh! Why did it have to be so burning hot? The rover wished that he could go on an undersea adventure instead- nice and cool.
After a hot ride which seemed as long as the whole trip, a parachute puffed out and made the rover slow down. Suddenly, the heat shield flew up into the airor was it the rover that was moving? He had fallen down and was hanging by a tiny string! This was a lot scarier than it was supposed to be. He looked at the ground far below and back up at his tiny thread. What if he fell and died on the rocks? He worried for a long time until nice, poofy, safe-looking airbags popped out around him and it seemed like the rover was inside a giant floating bubble. He swung his bubble around like a swing. This wars so fun! One side of the airbags drooped a little from all his bouncing. That was OK. The airbags would protect him from anything!
All of a sudden, he fell and fell. The rover hit the ground hard and bounced. When he fell for the second time, he held out his robotic arm to cushion the fall, but his arm popped. A spring flew out and his arm hung limp. His not-so-safe bubble of airbags rolled on the ground. When it finally stopped, the rover fell asleep under its deflated airbags.
When the rover woke up, he was tangled in a mess of bulky stuff. It was the airbags which he used to love. The rover struggled to get out and unfold his solar panels, but he was so sore from his 7-month trip that it took almost 5 sols to get ready to explore. Finally, he popped out his Mossbauer Spectrometer and swung around his panoramic camera. He smashed a little pebble that was in the way of his wheel with his Rock Abrasion Tool and rolled forward into the Martian landscape.