“Thanks, Rachel. I’ll take good care of it.”
Parkowski climbed up onto the raised platform and took a deep breath.
A technician attached all of the relevant cables and got her ready.
Parkowski did one final stretch of her arms and placed the helmet on her head.
She was now on Venus, seen through the eyes of ACHILLES I. The screen was semi-frozen: she could move her head around and see the environment, but her actuators weren’t controlling the robot’s limbs yet.
Pham’s voice popped into her ear. “Are you ready to transfer control?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
There was a slight hint of haptic feedback as the VR controllers were synced to the actual hardware on Venus.
Parkowski blinked and took note of her surroundings. The ACHILLES robot was currently in a deep depression, a long, cracked ridge that traveled east-west along the planet’s surface. According to her pre-mission briefing, it was the result of ancient lava flows from the seemingly extinct volcano Sacajawea.
Attached to her ACHILLES unit’s waist was a small quadcopter drone. The robot was heavily modified with thermal coverings and redundant electronics for use in the harsh Venusian environment. They were expensive, too — Pham had told her the total cost for the six quadcopters on the ILIAD mission was $100 million, roughly the same price as an F-35A stealth fighter.
She took a deep breath and pulled up the map. Just like in the planning session, the waypoints were clearly marked. Parkowski had to walk the length of the ridge towards the volcano and then climb it — the only difficult part of her mission — and then quickly move to another parallel canyon that would take her closer to the shield volcano’s crater so she could release the drone.
After that, Parkowski would turn around and travel back through that canyon until her shift was over and another operator would take over the ACHILLES units’ operations.
The engineer began walking at a good pace, the ACHILLES robot mimicking her every move. The ground was slightly inclined, boulders the size of a minifridge littering the path, but Parkowski was able to make good progress as she continued to the next waypoint.
The ridge started to narrow as she progressed onwards. Parkowski began to notice the gigantic shield volcano, named for the famous Native American explorer, off on the horizon. It wasn’t a particularly tall volcano, but it was wide, stretching hundreds of miles across at the base.
At one point, the ridge almost turned into a tunnel before opening back up. Parkowski’s progress slowed as she had to squeeze the ACHILLES unit between boulders, but sped up as the path widened.
She came to the first waypoint; a blue dot superimposed by the UI on the ridge wall. The top of the ridge was about fifteen feet off of the ground in the direction of the volcano.
The next canyon was only a quarter-mile from the current ridge but the surface between the two was a “hot zone” from a temperature standpoint. It was potentially from the volcano’s thermal activity, but more likely from tectonic activity underneath Venus’ crust. The ACHILLES robot was rated to operate at high temperatures, but these were at the high end of that range.
The Aering engineers who had done the initial thermal engineering and analysis on the two units had been contacted for this mission. They told Pham and Parkowski that if she spent less than four minutes in that zone, there would be no lasting damage to the heat shielding on the robot. Any more time than that might leave some permanent impact.
Parkowski at first laughed at that requirement. While she wasn’t in as good shape as her soccer days, four hundred meters should be a joke. But when she went back and looked at her top speed from the previous mission, she was going to have to push to keep it under four minutes.
First, though, she had to climb. She stood against the wall and found a decent path up, then started free-climbing. Parkowski was no rock climber, but the nimble ACHILLES unit and the low gravity of Venus made it fairly easy to get to the top.
As soon as she made it up, Parkowski started sprinting, or as close to it as she could manage in the VR setup. It was weird running in place, but the display’s screen showed her perspective continually moving forward. She wished she had set a timer, but then remembered how distracting the UI was — maybe it was a blessing in disguise.
Per her calculations, Parkowski made the quarter-mile in just over three minutes. “Done,” she said over the net, which had been fairly quiet the whole mission. Maybe this time she would be able to finish without any incidents. She dropped down about four feet into the canyon, the ACHILLES leg joints absorbing the impact.
“Good job, Grace,” Pham said in response.
Parkowski checked her mission clock. She had four hours from the start to get the drone launched, and she hadn’t even used up one. Plenty of time.
