Our hopes spin with her

The Argus - 5 July 2125

Brighton Space Centre stands proud on the Brighton seafront this evening, its slender tower catching the reflections in a sky tinged faintly by dust from the Martian frontier. At precisely 23:00, MarsBright - that now-familiar mirrored sphere - launched on its third mission to Mars.

From the beach it seemed to hover impossibly still, balanced atop the old i360 column, now transformed into a humming magnetic launch spine that pierces the skyline like a futuristic needle. The promenade fell silent as countdown lights winked along the tower’s ribs. At the final mark, a deep harmonic vibration rolled through the shingle, rattling faraway deckchairs and drawing startled cries from gulls overhead. Then, with a sudden controlled fury, electromagnetic forces surged through the spine, hurling the pod skyward in a smooth, corkscrewing ascent.

Inside MarsBright, the six-person crew are floating in a stabilised magnetic cradle, insulated from the crushing G-forces that once defined the early days of spaceflight. External cameras are beaming back breathtaking footage of Brighton slipping away in fragmented flashes of myriad lights, of the Palace Pier shrinking to a spindly ghost against the surf, and of the entire coastline curling into a bright seam on the edge of the world before vanishing behind the curvature of Earth.

It was only two decades ago that a handful of newly minted Sussex University physicists, armed with grant money and audacity, discovered the tower’s hollow steel core could be adapted into a vertical electro-magnetic accelerator. Their early tests - pinging lumps of iron skyward at modest velocities - were reported almost as an oddity by this very newspaper, tucked beside stories of seafront bandstands and municipal parking rows. Who then would have imagined that these playful experiments would one day give Brighton a front-row seat in humanity’s reach for the stars?

The city’s first Mars mission in 2115 was a triumph of daring engineering, delivering five astronauts into a fast transit orbit around the red planet and returning them home in a time once thought impossible. By 2121, MarsBright’s second venture established a semi-permanent outpost on Arcadia Planitia, where automated rigs began drilling for ice and testing on-site oxygen production, sketching the first practical outlines of a human habitat.

Now this third expedition will press further still, aiming to lay the groundwork for longer-term habitation - greenhouses seeded with engineered microbes, larger habitats to shield settlers from radiation, and new systems to tap Martian brines for water. MarsBright carries not only fresh crews and equipment, but also the weight of hope from a small seaside city whose name is now quietly etched alongside Houston and Baikonur in the chronicles of exploration.

As the gleaming pod dwindled into the night sky, the launch teams at Brighton Space Centre stood watching in shared, almost reverent silence. Then someone let out a breathless cheer, quickly joined by others, a fragile human sound carried down the wind to the waiting crowds on the beach. Another chapter begins - and as MarsBright spins toward that distant rust-red world, our hopes spin with her.