Fifteenth Entry

February 24 th , 2037 – 1 DAY UNTIL IMPACT

1111

Dear Space Diary.

I crash into a planet tomorrow. I know I’m going on about this NASA. I can’t help but feel I deserve a little sympathy. Because I’m crashing into a planet tomorrow.

Nobody has done this before. We’ve been to the moon, sure, but that was a controlled, planned landing. And their engine was equipped with certain luxury extras.

Like brakes.

See, NASA can’t actually turn off the engine. In their defence, it was designed to be turned off, but that’s not much of a defence because it can’t. This leaves me trapped out here. I was meant to be home three days ago, but instead I am out of our solar system, past Alpha Centauri and hurtling into unknown space. It has been mapped out, but only by telescope from a very long way away. Like if Columbus had decided to stay on the Santa Maria and map out all of America using his spyglass.

So - as they can’t stop the engine from their end - they’re going to perform an emergency stop by crashing me into the planet currently known as Splat. They hope that this will knock the engine out of commission, allowing me to stay still while they send another ship to come get me. I’m told this involves a lot of very complex mathematics, and with the current angle and trajectory, I’m going to hit close to North Pole of the planet, heading almost straight “down”, although that direction doesn’t make a whole lot of sense in space.

1311

NASA have messaged me. The expected time of impact is 1634 tomorrow, on the 25 th February, 2037. The ship will begin it’s decent at 1634, and they will enter the atmosphere as near head on as possible to slow the ship before impact.

The ship is designed to withstand very high force impacts in case of asteroids in space, so it should escape with only moderate damage to the structure, meaning the cabin should retain most of its shape.

They’re not so sure how the seatbelts will fare. They’re eager to find out.

1345

NASA have forwarded me a scan of the expected landing zone. It looks reassuringly flat, but unreassuringly hard. They’ve told me the rock is extremely soft and pleasant, comparatively speaking.

1545

Weather 7° Celsius.

Showers later in the day, then fine.