Chapter 506: Tardigrade Moss

Underneath the clear blue sky, a shimmering star gleamed so brightly that it was visible even in the daylight. Its arrival signaled the changes that were about to occur to this stagnant world.

Perhaps it was a false impression, as time went on, the spot of light started to magnify in the sky above. It seemed to move in sporadic bursts to a rhythm of its own.

After approximately an hour had passed, the spot of light was now the size of an instantly visible circle even with the clear blue sky cast behind it as background. It now stood out prominently against the blue canvas and was still growing larger with every passing minute.

At last, a spacecraft descended from the skies above. The bottom part of its hull had bright white flames scalding its skin as it tumbled downward at extreme speed until it landed on a flat patch of ground.

“Thump…”

There was a thunderous rumble as it kissed the ground. The spaceship landing was a success. The two gigantic engine thrusters that were nearly the same size as the spaceship itself helped brace the landing and allowed for a relatively soft landing.

After that, there was silence.

“The Ares has landed successfully.”

The digitally synthesized female voice of the broadcast broke through the mist of silence. “The level one alert is now lifted. All personnel is now permitted to leave the ejection capsules.”

As soon as the broadcast finished, the lights on sixteen large pieces of equipment shaped like iron coffins positioned in the most fortified center hull of the spaceship flickered from red to green. The iron coffins opened with a distinct whistling of gas pressure.

The group enclosed within the iron coffins stepped outside, all of them laughing and jesting with each other. They were vibrant and energetic as they stepped out of their respective ejection capsules. They began to jump up and down to feel the gravity force of this foreign land.

“I haven’t felt gravity for a week. It’s weird to suddenly experience gravity again…”

One of the members commented.

“You’ll get used to it soon enough.”

Another person added. “But the gravity on Mars is two-fifth that of the gravity on Earth. It may feel light and breezy to you now but wait till you get back to Earth. You’ll probably need half a year of adjustment before you can climb out of bed without needing assistance.”

“Well, there’s another way around it.”

A third person added. “And that’s to become a proper Martian.”

“Hahahaha!”

They laughed in unison. Some of them let out a deep, exhilarated sigh while others took off their spacesuit as fast as they could and started to bound for the canteen.

“Where are you going?”

“Whiskey time!”

There were only a few who went to indulge themselves with alcohol. When the captain of the Ares, Zhou Xiong got out of the ejection capsule, he did not take off the spacesuit immediately and instead went straight for the bridge of the spaceship.

“Captain Zhou!”

Another group trailed after the captain immediately. They were all thinking the same thing.

Zhou Xiong waved at them to signal that there was no need to rush things. When he arrived at the bridge, he finally saw the view outside through the clear windows.

Behind the window was an endless stretch of ice that went as far as the eye could see.

They rushed to the observation deck with quick wonder. However, they saw that the view here was not much different from the North Pole or the South Pole on Earth. There was nothing but a flat terrain made of ice that buried whatever landscape there was to be seen underneath it. Everywhere they looked, it was a blank sheet of white.

There were no signs of falling snow nor were there any odd rock formations that rose from the ground.

This was not too surprising for this group of scientists. There were several reasons they chose to land in the South Pole of Mars. One, to construct a base. Two, because the South Pole on Mars was the only location with water.

With that said, they were well aware that only a small part of this was composed of real water. A majority of the ice formation was dry ice composed of carbon dioxide.

“Ji Zhe, what do you think?”

A young Chinese female scientist among the group suddenly asked one of her colleagues next to her.

“Hmm, appearance-wise, it’s not much different from Earth.”

A cynical-looking young scientist responded to this, “I’m more curious to head to the locations where the Mars rover has explored. Those places are a more accurate representation of Mars.”

“Unfortunately, that will have to wait at least several months.”

Another scientist that came from Northern America chimed in, “When the base is properly established, perhaps we’ll get a chance to head over there for a quick lap, but now isn’t the time yet.”

The group chanted murmured discussions among themselves as they heard this.

“Alright, everyone, quiet down.”

Zhou Xiong suddenly silenced the excited crew with a commanding voice. After that, he looked above him at a rectangular-shaped camera installed at the ceiling. “Moss, dispatch the rovers and the drones. Show me what our surroundings look like and send the collected data to me.”

“Understood.”

The voice of the artificial intelligence named Moss came through the speakers. Immediately after that, a gigantic virtual display was presented before them. Framed inside the large display were four smaller panels of equal sizes. The images were pitch-black initially but quickly transitioned to a spontaneous burst of white noise taking over the screen. Shortly after that, what looked like black and white thermal imaging was fully formed on the display.

The collection of panels on the display seemed to show an image of a small room. The camera angles of each display could be seen rotating in a 360-degree circle and soon, they saw a door slowly being slid open, allowing cracks of light from the outside world to slip through the opening.

In an instant, the black and white thermal images transitioned into regular color footages. At the same time, two of the four cameras gradually shuffled out of the previously enclosed place while the remaining two cameras seemed to have taken flight and glided out at an elevated angle.

The four displays were a combination of live feeds broadcasted from two land rovers and two drones.

After that, the rovers and drones left the Ares one after another. The rovers were metal-framed vehicles fitted with solar panels. It left behind shallow tracks on the snowy terrain as it drove through the snow.

The rovers drove in circles around the ice shelf with the Ares as the center point. They covered and scanned every inch in the vicinity.

The two drones gained altitude rapidly and proceeded to split up into two separate directions at a time. They set out to travel as far as possible to chart as much nearby terrain as possible.

“The outside atmospheric pressure is 7.5 bar, the air composition consists of 95 percent carbon dioxide, 3 percent nitrogen, 1.6 percent hydrogen, 0.2 percent oxygen, 0.1 percent water vapor, carbon monoxide, neon, krypton, and xenon.”

The initial detection results were produced and described through the broadcast system, “The outside temperature is negative 85 degrees and the wind level is at level five.”

“Get the rovers to collect soil samples.”

Zhou Xiong ordered.

“Sampling… Sampling complete, performing analysis…”

“The surface consists of 95.7 percent dry ice, 2.2 percent regular ice, and there are also traces of iron oxide, silicon dioxide, and other elements. No trace of microbial activity detected for the time being.”

Everyone appeared enthused when they heard this piece of information narrated by Moss. Although there was enough evidence to prove the existence of water on Mars since a few days ago, it was different when they were witnessing it with their own eyes. The joy surfing through their minds could not be simply described with mere words.

“Captain Zhou, let me head out there to investigate!”

Some of them were starting to become impatient and eagerly volunteered to head out.

“Let me go too!”

“I’m going as well!”

“Me, as well!”

The group started to get excited.

“Everyone please calm down!”

Zhou Xiong halted their fervent demands with his palms held out. “Everyone, there’s no need to rush. As long as the results of the environment analysis are optimistic, we’ll be settling here within several months. There’s no need for us to rush things just yet.

“Still, manual investigation during this initial phase will still be necessary. In this case, each of the four continents can select one candidate to head out there. This is the best I can offer. After all, there are no guarantees as to what we’ll run into out there, so I have to take the necessary precautions to ensure the expedition’s success.”

Everyone agreed with the solution Zhou Xiong proposed. Before long, each of the major continent groups had selected their candidate for their first expedition.

When it came to selecting a candidate from the team of four researchers representing Blacklight Biotechnology, Zhou Xiong as the captain could not head out since he had to be responsible for addressing whatever issues that came up. In the end, he handed the task to a blond-haired young man in the team.

This young biology specialist went by the name, Hannibal Caesar.

This was the young man who had been following Chen Chen since the day that Eco Science City was founded. After all these years had passed, he had become a respectable savant in the biology field. He was also one of the professor rank members in God’s Forbidden Zone and had one of the highest levels of authority in Blacklight Biotechnology.

It was Hannibal himself who volunteered for the Mars expedition. He had done so because he always dreamt of interstellar travel and everything he had done was to lead up to this moment. Since the failure rate of this expedition was minuscule, Chen Chen decided to assign Hannibal to the Ares and granted him the opportunity to become the first batch of scientists arriving on Mars.

Hannibal did not gather around and mingle like the rest of the scientists. Instead, he went to the Ares laboratory and found a specific metal can stash among a row of other metal cans on a biological supply rack.

The contents of this metal could be the protoplast of a special plant – the “tardigrade moss”.

The tardigrade moss was a subclass of genetically modified mosses of the Euphorbiaceae family. Its body was derived from a class of moss named “Physcomitrella Patens”.

Since the DNA structure of moss allowed for easy reconstruction, it was relatively easy to partially replace its genes to produce desirable compounds and did so in large quantities. Therefore, at the request of Chen Chen, Hannibal went through the effort of cultivating stems of this “tardigrade moss”.

This was an overview of the procedures Hannibal went through to recreate it: Hannibal used elements of the tardigrade gene to transform “Physcomitrella Patens” which was a collection of earthmoss. It was worth noting that tardigrades were the most resilient living being in the earth’s biosphere.

It could withstand pressure six times that of the water pressure in the deepest seafloor. It could also withstand hundreds of times the lethal dose of radiation exposure for humans. Furthermore, it could survive in temperature conditions bordering absolute zero. There had been many instances of experiments exposing a batch of tardigrades in a vacuum space with temperature close to absolute zero for more than ten days. By the end of these experiments, a majority of the tardigrades survived.

The secret trick the tardigrades used was “cryptobiosis”, which was a process of slowing down its metabolism to such a slow crawl it became nearly completely halted. Upon entering this dormant state, its body water content could drop to less than three percent which would be the threshold of what was considered common dehydration. However, once it was exposed to water again, it would regenerate its life force and “reborn” like a phoenix rising from the ashes.

Hannibal took advantage of the black goo’s characteristics to strengthen the tardigrades. After a series of enhancements, the product was a monster the thickness of a human finger and entirely covered in a shell of hard chitin.

This mutated tardigrade was extremely adaptable to a wide range of conditions. It could survive for three to five years without access to food or water. It could survive in harsh boiling water just as well as it could withstand low temperatures close to absolute zero. Even when put in vacuum spaces, it merely entered cryptobiosis for as long as needed until the environment became sustainable again.

The tardigrade could survive for centuries in this cryptobiosis state.

After Hannibal had cultivated a desirable variant of tardigrade, he extracted its gene and grafted them onto the gene of the “Physcomitrella Patens”. Although this variant of genetically modified moss was not able to achieve the metamorphosis ability as the tardigrades did, it was just as resilient and could thrive, even grew in conditions below negative hundred degrees celsius. Its life span was also longer than any of its Earth contemporaries.

Based on the lab simulation conducted, there was a significant chance that this moss known as the tardigrade moss could survive in the harsh condition presented on mars. It was very likely that it could evolve into a special breed of moss plant on Mars.

One element that the Mars atmosphere had no short supply of was carbon dioxide. After this tardigrade moss was genetically enhanced, it was now able to survive in any harsh climate and only needed a minuscule amount of water for sustenance. If this plant could be incorporated into the Mars environment, there was a strong likelihood of reshaping the Mars atmosphere.

As the tardigrade moss continued to intake carbon dioxide and output oxygen, the atmospheric layer on Mars would slowly become strengthened and thickened. What would follow after that would be a gradual increase in temperature. Then, the buildup of carbon dioxide under the surface of Mars would evaporate, generating into a greenhouse effect…

After the temperature on Mars had reached a desirable level, the planet would allow for the habitation of a larger variety of plantations. To a certain point, even animals may be able to migrate to the planet. This positive feedback loop would continue on and on to make Mars a habitable planet.

However, it was always easier said than done. There was still a significant amount of progress that needed to be made before achieving all of these visions. It was now merely the beginning.

After obtaining the can of moss, Hannibal followed the designated crew for the expedition to the isolation cabin in the Ares. Spirits were high among the crew members and some of them were even competing and making bets to see which one of them would be the first to exit Ares and became the first human in history to set foot on Mars.