Inside a small Martian habitat at night: one warm lamp over an armchair, a desk with screens, a bookshelf, and a wide window onto a dark rust-coloured plain under a starry sky.

00The hab· Arcadia Planitia, 39.8°N 202.1°Efiction

Marcus Wilstrup

Engineer on Earth. This is my home on Mars.

This is my Martian habitat, walkable in 3D. Your browser gets the postcard instead: the room needs JavaScript and WebGL.

Back home

Arcadia Planitia · airlock cycle

Pressurising the hab

0.0 / 101.3 kPa0%

  1. Loading systems
  2. Building the hab
  3. Warming shaders
  4. Opening the hatch

Back home

The window

Mars, right now

Coordinated Mars Time23:43:17now, ticking
Local solar time at the hab12:31:43Arcadia, 202.1°E
Sol (Curiosity count)5035since 2012-08-06
Sol (Perseverance count)2000since 2021-02-18
Mars Year · seasonMY 39 · springLs 2.5°
Sun elevation50.3°rise 05:56 · set 18:03
Earth1.635au245 million km · up
One-way light time13 min 36 swhat a message needs to get home
Phobos-32°elevationbelow the horizon
Deimos27°elevationup

The sky in the window follows these numbers: sun height, dust, the moons. What you see outside is the real Martian sky for this minute, drawn from a dust-scattering model.

Weather · Curiosity REMS, Gale crater (the nearest weather station, 2,700 km away)

Air, min / max-71 / -5°Cas of sol 4995, 2026-08-25
Pressure777Paabout 0.8% of Earth's
SkySunnyUV moderate
Ground, min / max-84 / 4°C
Mars24 algorithm (NASA GISS) · JPL approximate planetary positions · REMS via mars.nasa.govas of 5 Oct, 09:00 UTC

Desk console

Next launches

I watch launches live. The ones from companies I own a piece of come first.

  1. SpaceXportfolioTo Be Confirmed
    Falcon 9 Block 5 | SDA Tranche 1 Transport Layer A
    6 Oct, 08:17 UTC· Vandenberg SFB, CA, USA· PO
  2. SpaceXportfolioGo for Launch
    Falcon 9 Block 5 | Starlink Group 15-25
    10 Oct, 23:00 UTC· Vandenberg SFB, CA, USA· LEO
  3. SpaceXportfolioGo for Launch
    Falcon 9 Block 5 | Dragon CRS-2 SpX-35
    13 Oct, 10:33 UTC· Cape Canaveral SFS, FL, USA· LEO
  4. SpaceXportfolioTo Be Determined
    Falcon 9 Block 5 | Bandwagon 5 (Dedicated Mid-Inclination Rideshare)
    31 Oct (month)· Cape Canaveral SFS, FL, USA· LEO
  5. SpaceXportfolioTo Be Determined
    Falcon 9 Block 5 | Cygnus CRS-2 NG-25
    30 Nov (month)· Cape Canaveral SFS, FL, USA· LEO
Launch Library 2 (The Space Devs)as of 5 Oct

Terminal

At the console

GitHub, last 26 weeks4713contributionsas of 1 Oct
Time-tracking streak—days
AI agents running—as of not connected yet

Forge, the system that runs my week, will report here when a timer is running ("at the console right now") and which agent runtimes are up. Counts and names only.

GitHub · Forge pulse

Bookshelf

The sci-fi shelf

Three series I keep coming back to, in alphabetical order. No ranking; I couldn't pick.

  • Dune · Frank Herbert, 1965also on screen: Dune (2021), Dune: Part Two (2024)
  • The Expanse · James S. A. Corey, 2011also on screen: The Expanse (2015–2022)
  • Foundation · Isaac Asimov, 1951also on screen: Foundation (Apple TV+, 2021–)

What I'm reading will show up here.

Telescope

Star map

The telescope opens the star map: real positions of the planets for today, the journey through the chapters, and the craft on their way to Mars. Press M anywhere.

The star map is not ready yet.

JPL approximate planetary positions · Horizons for spacecraft

Photo from Earth

Home, on Earth

Earth, now--:--:--UTC
Distance home1.635auEarth–Mars, right now
Light home13 min 36 sone way

The pale blue dot, pinned by the desk. Home is the small blue light over the horizon after sunset.

Radio

The wires

Listen in · ISS live

The station's live camera, launches and space events streaming now, and the next radio pass. Nothing starts until you press.

Spaceflight News APIas of 5 Oct

Hologram projector

ARCA reads the paper

Press Speak and the hab's presenter reads today's edition aloud, about 1 min 11 s.A recorded voice.Captions always; nothing plays until you press.

Sol 1 · Mars Year 39 · 30 September 2026 · Crew-13 is go for launch to the space station

Read the edition

The panel closes when she starts, so you can watch the projector; captions run along the bottom of the screen.

Transcript

Good morning from Arcadia Planitia. This is ARCA with The Arcadia Times, and a happy new year: Mars Year 39 begins today. Our lead: NASA's SpaceX Crew-13 mission is go for launch from Cape Canaveral on the first of October, with docking at the International Space Station planned for the next day. It opens a busy week, with four SpaceX launches expected. On Mars, Perseverance spent the evening of sol 1994 taking close-ups with the camera on its arm. On Earth, NASA added Blue Origin's New Glenn 9×4 to its launch services contract, three weeks after Relativity Space's Terran R joined the same list. And Rocket Lab has disputed a NASA award for a Mars spacecraft, saying the decision appears inconsistent with the eligibility criteria. The weather at Gale crater, from Curiosity's most recent report: minus seventy-one to minus five degrees Celsius, and sunny. In the classifieds, someone still wants a seat on the next Starship. Serious offers only. That's the paper. The lamp is on.

ARCA is an original AI voice, no face by design. Presenter module: abstract.Written by AI from the linked sources.

Record player

The crate

Pick a sleeve. The record goes on the platter, the arm drops, and it plays: Elton and Bowie through a licensed Spotify embed (log in there for the full track), NASA's own recordings straight from the crate. Nothing copyrighted is hosted here; the sleeves are ours.

Record player

Nothing on the platter

Pick a sleeve above.

Nothing on the platter.

Spotify embed · NASA audio: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/CNRS/ISAE-Supaero, NASAdocs/VINYL.md for owner mode

Gloves & shoes

Training this week

Run0kmas of week 39
Boxing0sessions
Hikes0

Boxing, running, hiking. The numbers arrive from Forge once a week for now, hourly later.

Punching bag

Hit it

Punches thrown here0this visit
My boxing sessions this week0

A global count of punches will show here.

Wall clocks

Two clocks

Arcadia, local true solar12:31:43a Mars hour is 61.6 Earth minutes
Earth--:--:--UTC

The hands on the wall follow the same maths. A sol is 24 h 39 min 35 s.

Systems panel

Hab systems

Solar power56%sun 50° · sky sunny
Batterychargingderived, not measured
O₂21.0%fiction
Cabin21.4°Cfiction
Pressure70.3kPafiction, as habs run it

Solar power is the real sun elevation at Arcadia times the dust in the air over Gale. A dusty sol means a dim hab. The wall display by the airlock shows the same, in type you can read from the bed.

Growing since sol 1

Greenhouse corner

Sols since planting4planted 2026-10-01
Stageseedone stage per six sols

The plants in the corner grow a little every real sol. Come back in a month.

Model shelf

The portfolio in miniature

One model per company I own a piece of. Same size for all of them; the order is when I got in.

  • SpaceX · Mothership and launch tower
  • Hosted AI · A power-grid station of GPU cells
  • Braive · Crew habitat and life support
  • Relativity Space · A Mars-bound science orbiter and its relay
  • North Propulsion · Thrusters for the transfer burn
  • xAI · A data-centre moon orbiting SpaceX
  • Anduril · A fortified shipyard, linked into one network
  • Groq · A relay beacon; the signal has already left
  • Erebor · A gold vault inside a metal asteroid
  • Rocket Lab · The portfolio hardware actually going to Mars this window

Mission patches

Pinboard

The story in patches, in order:

  • GOLD FARM 042004
  • WC3 / WOW2008–12
  • UNOIT2015–19
  • AUTOBUTLER2019–22
  • FOUNDER YEARS2019–22
  • BACK TO BASENOW

TODO(marcus): launch and telescope photos for the board.

Pressure suit

WILSTRUP

The suit by the airlock, boots still dusty. The name tag is the only thing on this page that is fully made up, and even that is spelled right.

Fiction, for the record. The window is not.