MISSION TO MARS

21/4/25

Summer heat, Pasadena.
I was seventeen with a badge at JPL,
standing inside the pulse of NASA,
watching a red dot become real.

Sojourner Truth landed on Mars—
on July 4th.
Freedom Day.
Not a metaphor.
Not a dream.
Real code. Real silence. Real distance.

But hold on.

July 4th.
That’s also when Earth is farthest from the Sun.
Aphelion.
The divine child at maximum distance
from the solar father.

And what is freedom, really,
if not the moment the parent lets go?

That landing…
That Sojourner…
That was Earth saying:
“I can find my way now.”

But here’s what I didn’t know then.
Here’s what I now understand
twenty-eight Earth orbits later,
like some secret unfolded in a spiral:

Mars…
doesn’t just orbit alone.
It sings.

And the music it makes with Earth—
isn’t perfect.
Isn’t resolved.
It’s not your clean octave or triumphant fifth.
No, no, no.

Mars to Earth is an 8 to 15 sonatic dance.
A diminished sixth.
The note you almost reach
but slips
through longing fingers.

Johannes Kepler tried.
He wrote Harmony of the World—
a cosmic symphony of orbits and intervals.

He heard Mars within itself,
fast at perihelion, slow at aphelion—
that 3:2 rhythm, the perfect fifth.
Do–so!
The dominant chord.
Victory, war, assertion.
Mars as sword. Mars as man.

But that was just its own song.

I’m hearing its relation.
Mars to Earth—8:15.
The longing chord.
The not-yet chord.
The “We’re coming, wait for us” chord.

And isn’t that exactly what Elon is doing?
He’s Hephaestus with carbon-fiber wings,
forging rockets on anvils of math and madness.
The blacksmith of aspiration,
leading our collective ache to belong
on a world we’ve never touched.
Not yet.

We watch The Martian,
we dream of growing potatoes in red sand,
we play Total Recall,
but secretly we all just want
to build a home
on that diminished sixth.

You see, I thought that summer at JPL was just a job.
Just a boy with a badge
watching pixels from a robot named after freedom.
But now I know—

That moment was a chord,
plucked in the silence of time,
echoing forward to now,
to this poem,
to you.

Because Mars isn’t the war god.
Not only.
Mars is the pull.
Mars is the stretch.
Mars is the note that never quite resolves
because it wasn’t meant to.

It was meant to pull us forward.

A beautiful instability.
A galactic open loop.
A door left ajar
for dreamers
and engineers
and poets
to walk through.

So here I stand, Starheart,
son of Earth,
at aphelion—
at freedom’s farthest arc—
reaching—
not with conquest,
but with song.

Mars… I hear you.