Life on ‘Mars’
The Mars weather is beautiful today, and an astronaut is about to suffocate to death under the cloudless blue sky. The trouble starts after three crew members leave the safety of the Hab, their pressurised six-person living station, and venture outside to do some routine work. They trudge along in 16kg spacesuits, breathing air pumped in by a fan and watching the jagged red landscape through their fishbowl-like glass helmets.
As they head back to the station, one astronaut, Aga Pokrywka, begins acting strangely. Her movements are sluggish. She stops walking. The radio crackles. The Hab is only a few dozen yards away, but Pokrywka can’t seem to go further. She collapses on to the red clay.
Robert Turner, the crew’s medical officer, radios the Hab:
