Helios Mars mission

*This article is about Helios' mission to Mars in 1994. For the spacecraft used, see Phoenix (spacecraft).*

## Mission Details

### Purpose

* Land the first humans on Mars
* Establish a base camp
* Mine ressources

### Crew

* Ed Baldwin (mission commander)
* Danny Stevens
* Nick Corrado †
* Louisa Mueller
* Adarsh Sethi
* Benjamin Harmon
* Zizzo Glover
* Lars Hagstrom
* Sandy Bostik
* Perez
* 6 additional crew members

### Result

* Failed to be first on Mars
* Base destroyed by landslide
* Several crew members killed

## Mission Patch

**Helios Mars mission** was the first privately founded space mission to another planet in the Solar System, operated by the American private company Helios Aerospace. Its goal was to beat its national competitors NASA and Roscosmos in the race to Mars and be the first to land humans on the red planet. Additional goals were to establish a base on the Martian surface, mine ressources to produce fuel, and find water deposits.

## History

### Race to Mars

*Main article: Race to Mars*
During a press conference in 1992, Helios Aerospace CEO Dev Ayesa announced that their spacecraft *Phoenix* would be ready for launch at the next launch window in 1994 already, 2 years earlier than the planned missions of the US and the USSR . He also revealed that the mission would be captained by ex NASA astronaut Ed Baldwin, after he was removed from NASA's Sojourner-1 mission.

*Phoenix* started in fall 1994 within 2 weeks of its competitors, the American *Sojourner 1* and the Soviet *Mars-94* vehicles. At first, it appeared as though *Phoenix* was definitely going to beat the other crafts to Mars, but the deployment of a solar sail on *Sojourner-1* pushed them ahead. Additionally, *Mars-94* burned their engines to dangerous extremes, pushing them even further, putting them in first place whilst *Phoenix* was last.

However, the engines of *Mars-94* malfunctioned, which caused dangerous levels of radiation within their craft, leading to the necessity of a rescue mission. In theory, the *Phoenix* was perfect for a rescue mission, having a landing craft that could be used as a ferry, and a greater crew capacity than the NASA spacecraft. In spite of this, it was decided by the ground control of Helios Aerospace that they would press on to Mars.

The crew of the *Phoenix* attempted to conduct the rescue mission regardless, however found that they were unable to light their engines due to a software update that was sent from Earth during the no-go message from Helios Mission Control, forcing the *Sojourner*, which lacked a subsidiary craft and had a smaller crew compartment, to conduct the mission, forfeiting the Mars mission. Commander Baldwin attempted to conduct the mission in lieu of Dev Ayesa's command, but the software update removed crew control from the craft, forcing the *Phoenix* to continue onwards. This decision led to the *Sojourner* craft taking great damage when the *Mars-94* malfunctioned a second time. However, the *Sojourner-1* survived this damage and was able to refuel using the Soviet craft.

Due to dust storms on Mars, the Helios mission was unable to attempt landing until *Sojourner* was already in orbit. An attempt at landing was made by Baldwin and Danny Stevens in the MSAM lander, but it was aborted by Baldwin due to navigation failures caused by the storm. Subsequently, the *Sojourner* became the first crewed craft to land on the Martian surface, though the Helios craft was able to land at a later date. Due to damage caused by a too rough landing, *Sojourner* was left too damaged to take off from the Martian surface again, leading to *Phoenix* and *Popeye* becoming the sole craft capable of taking all three crews back to Earth.

### Landing on Mars

After they finally managed to land on the ground, the *Phoenix* crew sent their two mobile habitat rovers and additional equipment to their landing site and started establishing their base camp and produce fuel from Martian ressources. Like the American Happy Valley base, Helios' base was built in the canyon Melas Chasma inside the Valles Marineris system, close to a ridge later named Gagarin Ridge.

When Roscosmos found out about a potential deposit of liquid water in the underground of that ridge, they made a deal with Helios to use their drill and the Soviet crew was heading over from Happy Valley to Helios' base camp for a drilling mission, excluding the Sojourner crew from their discovery.

### Destruction of Helios' Mars base

*Main article: Gagarin Ridge drilling disaster*
During the drilling mission, the giant drill came apart under too much housing pressure, caused due to Danny Stevens' refusal to increase the drill compressor speed due to his drug problem. As a result, parts of Gagarin Ridge collapsed, producing a huge landslide which resulted in the deaths of Isabel Castillo, Nick Corrado, and Alexei Poletov, and also destroyed the base, burying one of the rovers, the MSAM, and other Helios facilities.

## See also

* *Phoenix*
* Helios Mars base
* Gagarin Ridge drilling disaster
* Sojourner-1 mission
* Race to Mars

## References

1. ↑ *For All Mankind* TV Series - Season 3, Episode 2: "Game Changer"
2. ↑ *For All Mankind* TV Series - Season 3, Episode 3: "All In"
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 *For All Mankind* TV Series - Season 3, Episode 4: "Happy Valley"
4. ↑ *For All Mankind* TV Series - Season 3, Episode 5: "Seven Minutes of Terror"
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 *For All Mankind* TV Series - Season 3, Episode 6: "New Eden"
6. ↑ *For All Mankind* TV Series - Season 3, Episode 7: "Bring It Down"
7. ↑ *For All Mankind* TV Series - Season 3, Episode 8: "The Sands of Ares"