The story: part 1
The interplanetary spacecraft Pegasus and her five-strong crew are
launched into Earth orbit. Their epic six-year mission has begun.
Forty one days from Earth lies their first encounter - with Venus.
Although Earth's nearest neighbour, it could not be a more different
world. With clouds of sulphuric acid, surface temperatures pushing 500
degrees centigrade, snows of metal encrusting mountain peaks and atmospheric
pressures that could destroy a submarine, this is a hell-hole of a planet.
Astronauts Zoe Lessard and Yvan Grigorev make the nail-biting descent
in a landing craft called Orpheus.
Enveloped in a shroud of gases and plummeting to the surface in a fireball,
Pegasus loses contact with them. Cocooned in the supremely re-enforced
Orpheus, though, the astronauts land safely.
Encased in an ultra-toughened titanium spacesuit, Yvan takes mankind's
historic first steps onto the planet.
His objectives are to collect samples, lay sensors to listen for volcanic
eruptions and to retrieve a piece of a robot from a previous Russian
mission - but it proves almost too much as the temperature inside his
suit soars.
With everything that's keeping them alive at its design limits, these
two planet pioneers make their escape with only seconds to spare.
Mars is 150 million miles and 62 days of interplanetary travel away.
Mission Commander Tom Kirby, medic and geologist John Pearson and exo-biologist
Nina Sulman make their descent in another specially designed lander,
Ares.
This frozen, red planet should prove comparatively easy to explore
compared to the ferocious conditions on Venus but, as Tom steps onto
the surface, a dust devil, five times larger than anything on Earth,
engulfs him.
Fortunately, the Martian atmosphere is so weak that even these giant
twisters are harmless. It does Tom no permanent damage, bar leaving
a red hue all over his spacesuit!
Supported by a host of robotic explorers, they head for the edge of
Valles Marineris - a canyon system a thousand times the size of Arizona's
Grand Canyon.
Their quest is to search for water in an attempt to discover life on
Mars.
Marvelling at the breathtaking views, the team is suddenly alerted
to the imminent arrival of a solar storm carrying lethal levels of radiation.
The safest place is inside Ares. Desperate to complete the experiments,
their struggle back becomes a race for their lives.
Battling against radiation and giant dust storms, the team eventually
complete their exploration of Mars and return to Pegasus.
They must now cross the inner solar system for an unsettling, but necessary,
close encounter with the Sun at temperatures approaching a staggering
two million degrees centigrade.
This accelerates Pegasus briefly to one million kilometres an hour,
which helps propel them the next half a billion miles to Jupiter.
On the way, however, a scary brush with a rogue fragment of rock begins
to erode the crew's trust in Mission Control back on Earth.
As they crash into the top of giant Jupiter's immense atmosphere a
few weeks later, there is concern that Control might have betrayed them
again.
Even more worryingly, flight medic John Pearson seems to be getting
very sick.
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