In the mid 2030s the famous martian rover Curiosity died on the surface of Mars. During the 22-or-so years it had been on Martian soil, it had done a countless amount of research, providing NASA with more than enough information to start a colony on the red planet. Throughout the following years, NASA would deploy resources for a base to be constructed on the surface of Mars. On July 17th, 2040, the first astronaut stepped foot on Mars, making history.

But everyone knew that by now, the Mars colonies had been running solidly for 86 years. A lesser known fact, that NASA had suppressed from the Earth population, was that every astronaut who went to Mars had made their way to Curiosity’s final resting place and buried their mission patches in the soil as a way to pay respects to the robot. It had become a tradition, a ritual, an initiation, and it had started with the first group of astronauts to land on Mars.

Early in the morning on February 24th, 2126, the Astronaut stepped out of the Main Dome on the Martian surface, ready to do his initiation. The breeze pushed lightly against him as he walked, kicking up puffs of dark orange sand. Today had been his assigned “initiation day” by the leaders of the base. When he reached his buggy, Nomad 8B, he felt he was ready to face the challenge of the long drive. His destination was the southwestern-most part of Hesperia Planum, where Curiosity had succumbed to nature’s wrath.

Nomad 8B rolled slowly through the sands of Hesperia Planum, not moving relatively fast compared to the giant dunes around it. The ground, though it looked flat and unchanging, was not the same density throughout. The winds of Mars created sand patches of different densities, and even the best drivers wouldn’t know when they had stumbled upon one. Unbeknownst to the Astronaut, Nomad 8B rolled over the changing point between two densities of sand. Within a second it had tipped onto 2 of its 4 wheels, and the Astronaut was thrown from the Nomad like a tennis ball in a slow curving arc. He hit the ground, and lay there for a second, listening for the hiss of a leak. After hearing nothing, he slowly began to get back up.

The Nomad needed damage assessment, but it first needed to be righted. Digging through the debris in the sand, the Astronaut found a handheld pulley used for such situations as this. Made like rock climbing gear, the pulley used steel cables and an electric winch to allow astronauts to move objects much heavier than themselves. The Astronaut latched the pulley onto the Nomad, stepped back, dug his boots into the sand, and began to pull. Slowly the wheel that was in the air came down to rest on the ground, while the Nomad’s fallen wheel was pulled up to rest in the air. Now the Astronaut needed to pull all four wheels onto flat ground. After 15 minutes and a whole lot of cussing, the Nomad sat on solid soil, and the Astronaut could begin his assessment.

Nomads were an old type of rover, but that made them easier to fix. The newer rovers, called Skimmers, used treads and thrusters to move around at a much faster pace than the wheel-based Nomads. The electric motors that controlled the wheels seemed to be in working order, but the wheel that had fallen down was bent beyond repair. The oxygenator and batteries seemed to still be working, but the heaters were offline and needed to be replaced. After turning off the batteries, the Astronaut started digging for all the tools and components that had fallen into the sand when the rover crashed. The repair process was going to be difficult but not impossible. He started with the easier of the problems and started changing out the wheel. After the replacement wheel had been slotted onto the wheel housing and bolted back on, it was time to fix the resistive heaters. The long tungsten wires used to heat parts of Nomad were broken, cut by something shifting in the crash. The Astronaut found the replacement wires and installed them carefully, then turned on the batteries. To his surprise the rover started up normally. Now he had the option to head back to the base or continue with his initiation. After a moment’s consideration, the Astronaut chose to finish his initiation. He was only a couple kilometers away from Curiosity anyways. He wouldn’t get another chance, so he would go at half speed to avoid crashing again.

Nomad 8B crested one final dune, then he saw it. Curiosity was starting to fall apart after many years of being sandblasted by the winds of Mars. Its instruments were bent and some of them had even fallen off. The Astronaut carefully stepped off of his Nomad, and with nothing but the sound of his survival backpack and his own breath, he made his way towards the ancient vehicle. The metal was weathered and rough from years of enduring high-speed winds. He placed his gloved hand on the front-right wheel of the machine, feeling the shape of the wheel. A machine, over a hundred years old, and he was touching it. The Astronaut ripped off his mission patch, watched the rust-red sand flow over it in the breeze, then tossed it on the ground, kicking more sand over it. The tradition was upheld, and he made his way back to the Nomad, the sweaty air in his suit reminding him of the thin layer of material that separated his flesh from the harsh environment that surrounded him. Before sitting back on the Nomad he took a sip of water from the bulb in his faceplate, wetting his dry mouth. The Astronaut took a moment to appreciate the ingenuity of humankind, and then drove off towards civilization.