Mars Communication Link Victim of an Apparent Sabotage

A main connection to a remote section of the Red Planet was briefly severed.

Note: Stay up to date with our latest dispatch from the Martian Outlands here and learn more about our mission here.

All communications with Arsia Mons were temporarily halted on Sol 10,380 when a ground station connecting the local mesh network with MarsLink was vandalized.

The hiccup was brief with traffic soon re-routed through another ground station, but the short outage did not go unnoticed. Several surveillance drones connected to the network on the west side of the central glacier were observed performing their auto-land sequence.

“Normally an issue like this would be automatically re-routed and resolved almost instantaneously,” Dominion spokesperson Argenta Romaine said in a statement. “But given the current situation, we have added limited security protocols to ensure that certain modifications to the network receive human approval.”

Romaine declined to elaborate further, but Dominion has made previous reference to increased security protocols in response to both attempted network breaches in recent months and vandalism of ground infrastructure at Arsia Mons that has been recurring intermittently for over five Martian years. Readers of this column will recall that attempted drone stonings have also become common in recent months.

Dominion says it is reviewing footage from the MarsView satellite network and will seek to make formal information requests of individuals “in a diligent and equitable manner.”

The exact extent of the damage was not disclosed.

Ironically, this latest incident comes as work is underway to expand drone surveillance and glacial outburst flood warning (GLOF) systems at Olympus Mons. The expansion there is being undertaken with the full support of local Outpost councils, and no organized opposition or resistance.

While fatal GLOFs have occurred more recently on Arsia Mons, Olympus Mons remains the site of the most deadly such event to occur since first arrival, when an entire outpost was virtually wiped out as it was nearing completion.