Ares Disaster

The Ares Disaster was the catastrophic failure of the first manned expedition to attempt a Mars landing. The ship broke apart while aerobraking in the Martian atmosphere in 2003, and had a crew of 30.

Preparation
The Ares Expedition had its roots in the early 1990s as UAA was getting Superior assembled in low earth orbit. At the turn of the century Mars was the next major milestone in the Space Race as Low Earth Orbit and Cislunar Space had already seen heavy development by national, international, and corporate interests. In 1997 UAA landed the first rover on Mars and in the same year began searching for partners and a crew for a manned mission to the red planet. The Soviet Union had between 1979 and 1984 sent the MRVA Mission, a five year expedition that did flybys of Mars and Venus, leaving satellites in orbit and dropping probes down to each planet. There were no manned landings or atmospheric incursions on these missions, and since then most interplanetary exploration had been robotic in nature.

In 1999 the Usonian President announced that within the first decade of the 21st century Usonia would be the first nation with a science outpost on Mars. The space station Superior was designed to be spun up at Martian gravity and became both mission control and shipyard for the Ares Expedition.