It is going to be another nine months before we are able to launch back towards Earth. This trip would be shorter than the trip to Europa, but that did not really matter. Once again for the duration of the space travel we would be in cryogenic sleep again.
If it was up to me, I would leave today. There had been so much more that had been planned for this mission. The thing is with a mission like this there is no way to truly plan until you are there. I often criticized this mission for not being prepared for what lied ahead, but the more I think about it I wonder how the mission coordinators were supposed to do better. All we had when we started this mission were a few good satellite images and some spectrographic data, and yet despite the flaws in the mission we were successful. We'd discovered alien life.
That thought felt good. I wish the team members who died could have known their death meant something. Maybe deep down they did know. I try not to forget them, making sure to stop by their graves with each spacewalk.
First Richard who had never woken from the cryogenic sleep. The creatures I saw while on the submarine would have amazed him. It was his life dream to discover alien life out here, I only wish he had seen them. Maybe if there was something beyond, he had through watching me.
Not a day went by where I didn't think about Adams during the quiet time at basecamp. Those boring moments are where he always shone. I used to have nightmares about his voice in the final hours of his life as he lay there wedged between the ice, but those had since faded. I wish Miller had stayed around long enough to find hers would fade too. I just hope in her final moments she found her peace.
As we await our window to return home, I think about Miller a lot. We had truly become friends out here on Europa. In my busy work schedule, I had no time to meet people like her on Earth and I feel like she was the same. We would have been friends for a long time. I will always value the time we had together.
Poor Horvat. Had he died just a day later. He would have been there to hear the announcement that we had discovered life. I wish I had gotten to know him better. I felt like I was finally starting to connect with him before me and Commander Hunt went into the submarine.
Even if it can be hard to reflect on our lost teammates, I find it to be therapeutic. It is important to remember them that way their legacies can live on with is.