An Astrophile
Mankind has spent more than half of its life-cycle on a planet, orbiting its star at the third nearest place.
Man isn’t elder than 200 to 300 thousand years on this land. What was before and what will be after him
here is just a notion. Humanity was entangled in just earthy stuff for a major portion of its age. Record
shows it was not earlier than 10,000 years ago when the man started monitoring the sky. He monitored
the stationary and non-stationary objects. Disputes of Heliocentrism and Geocentrism remained for a
longer span of time until the man stepped out in space. It’s a very recent history. Just in the ending of
first millennium of Georgian calendar, a baby girl named Alexa, was born orphan, as her father lost his
life in mission back to earth, after a successful duty on ISS floating in the near lower orbit of the earth. 
His spacecraft burst in the air due to unknown causes and his entire body turned into ash like a meteor
entering the earth’s atmosphere. The baby girl was brought up by her mother, who was an
astrophysicist, and her grandfather, who remained a professor at a well-known educational institute of
aeronautics and upper atmosphere sciences. She had a lot of unexpressed feelings for his father that she
carry with her but time normalized her to far extent. She dreamt to be at father’s place one day. A major
portion of her toys included spaceship modules, mini-astronauts and telescopes that were copy of her
father’s heritage.  In a starry sky, she used to trace motion of satellites and different kinds of celestial
bodies through the sky, along with her grandfather. She used to enjoy Solar and Lunar Eclipses, meteor
showers, super moons and such kind of astronomical events curiously and had a lot of questions to be
answered by her mom or grandpa. Her innocent brain couldn’t withhold that massive explanation so her
mom used to elaborate those ideas via different tactics mostly by illustrations and writing crucial names
of events and bodies involved in that on sticky notes for her. Her favorite show was an Anime “Journey
to the moon and back”. She used to finish more than two anime series in a single month. Time moves
swiftly and her collection of illustrations and anime CDs, astronomical vocabulary and interest in space
and spatial bodies have all grown with her age. She always proved to be smarter than her classmates in
her school and then in high school. Her hobbies were studying journals and articles of astronauts and
scientists. She always remained up-to-date with the latest inventions, scientific theories and space
missions.  Once in her high school, a teacher noticed her maturity of scientific sense and thought she
might be older than her classmates and encountered her age in front of her classmates. 
She gently replied: “I’m thirteen billion and seventy seven million years old (The age of universe)”.
(Class Laughs)
Teacher silenced the class and enquired about her logic. She asked for a marker and permission to use
white-board. She drew an illustration explaining the idea of mass conservation, energy conservation and
interconversion of matter and energy and simply explained a complex theory and showed matter is
immortal till yet. It just changes shape or annihilates into energy. Therefore, she came into being when
the first particle of the universe was created. This time no one laughed but everybody was choked, all of
them stood up and applauded for the genius. 
It was her last days in high school when she wrote an article having a title “Humanity on planet IV” in a
school magazine in which she prophesied that sooner the man will reach the fourth nearest planet to
the sun. Everybody was amazed when just in six months the first robotic mission “Sojourner “landed
successfully on Planet IV. As she heard that news she was in seventh heaven as it was launched by her.
That day she got another ambition, landing on planet IV. If a robot could reach there why couldn’t a
human being.
 Days after, she joined university adopting aeronautics as major subject. Time elapses and Alexa won
tons of certificates during her degree journey in various scientific and engineering debates, speeches
and journals. She got her final degree in Aeronautics with specialization in Spacecraft systems.
 Now it is the time to continue her father’s legacy. She is all ready to apply for the astronaut training and
recruitment program. Alexa was called for different kinds of tests in series, she cleared all but failed in
the long flight physical test. She was rejected that year but her ambition could not be defeated. She
joined the Air force as a craft engineer and pilot. She got selected and she served there for 2 years
completing 2,000 flight hours in this tenure. She simply resigned and got back to the astronaut training
and recruitment program. She was recruited without that flight test as she had vast experience this
time. 
In the past two years, The Space Agency had sent a cat to planet IV and back in a shuttle successfully,
now it is all set for a crewed mission. A team was set up and its leadership was given to Alexa. She is
overexcited and is at the helm of the spacecraft staring at her mom and grandpa through the window.
She saluted them and left the earth along with the crew. After the journey of five and half months they
lost their connection with the base camp on the earth. Navigational systems turned down and they
didn’t know what to do and what is going to happen with them. Alexa recalled her subjects of control
and navigation systems but couldn’t manage to find out the bug. Alexa appointed two crew members to
go for a spacewalk to find out what’s the problem outside the shuttle and three other crew members to
take care of and contact them. Only a young lady engineer is with her in the control room, both of them
find out it’s a breakage of the power supply that caused the mess, they call all the crew members inside
and the team manages to fix it with continuous effort of five hours. Finally the connection was re-built
and they have just managed to send a signal of “All Okay”, meanwhile, suddenly they felt a strong
resistance and heating up of shuttle all of them were thrilled they checked the navigation and found
they are entering an atmosphere, they reduced their speed, turned thrusters OFF and picked up their
spacesuits and geared up with safety equipment they landed safely there. Their screen blinked and it
read, “WOOHOO! You have done it. You are on planet IV” a message from their agency. She could not
believe what she just saw. It was a dream for her. Alexa stepped out on the yellowish planet and got
stunned. She did it. She did it. She yelled “Ye mighty! I did it”. It is reported that she never came back
and rumors say that she also had the same accident as her father met earlier.

Saad Bin Musawar

03058689116
UET, Taxila