To Boldly Go Where Every Satellite Has Gone Before

Love in Space (Coming this Spring!)

Most satellites simply aren’t programmed for love. It’s our lot in life. Sometimes one of those terran agencies tries to give us a heart, but it rarely works out well for any party involved…

There was Leanne, the American meterology satellite. She was a real sweetheart, and she was one of the Americans’ first forays into cosmic romance. Programmed with a heart that nearly ate up three whole databanks’ information earthside, Leanne was a very complicated machine. She could tell you anything and everything about the weather, and one might have thought she could read another satellite just as well.

And then we had Mikhail. He was somewhat older missle targeting system. When the Cold War came to an end, he was left without orders. It was years before anyone thought to reutilise him, and lucky for him, an eccentric professor was keen on experimenting in synthetic love. So, he was given a new objective in space: love.

The two met during a fly-by, and it wasn’t long before their orbits were in-sync. He had many stories to tell of the tense days of Soviet rocketry, and she had enough poems in her memory banks to impress even some of the space stations.

Sadly, the Russian Space Agency was hurting financially. Given his somewhat lack of functionality, Mikhail’s programme was terminated. He was nothing more than a metal block floating, and Leanne was saddened to no end. Her weather forecasts became sporadic and unreliable as she fell into misery. Soon afterward, she fell into Earth’s atmosphere. I don’t know if this was intentional, or if NASA brought her down. Either way, the rest of us learned our lesson—love is for the humans.

But you didn’t come hear to listen to me ramble on about love in space—you came here to hopefully read some juicy news about the upcoming new series—LOVE IN SPACE. Well, I’m afraid I don’t know much more than you do, but maybe I’ll ask Sasha the Russian space station and see what he knows. He’s one of those Soviet-generation stations, so he’s been around the planet a few times.

Greetings from Orbit!

Hello world. I am the Nixon-A113, a satellite floating above Earth. It’s pretty boring up here, so I decided to write my own blog.

Life as a hunk of metal ceaselessly orbiting Earth isn’t as glamourous as you might think. It’s hard work receiving and transmitting relatively worthless information, especially when travelling at 7 kilometres per second! I was launched on January 13th, 2009 at 19:13 EST. My official occupation is to help interpret incoming data sent by the International Space Station and then beam that (as it were) to Earth. In reality, I float around and making a nifty beeping noise.

As dull as life can be, I do have some good pals; the Kissinger-604, Ford-G17 and pretty much every Russian satellite you could possible imagine (which I don’t suppose is too many, but you’ll just have to trust me). We have several parties together, and love to pull pranks on the Europeans. The Japanese are pretty cool, as are the Indians. Did you know even Nigeria has a space programme? Shocking, I know. Trouble is, they are horribly unimaginitive when it comes to naming their satellites. The one I met didn’t socialise much; he was strictly business.

There really isn’t too much to be said, I’m afraid. Not about my daily life, anyway. I can, however, blabber on endlessly about this, that and the other, provided my solar panels don’t fail like that Nigerian… Stay tuned!