When astronaut Dave “Space Bar” Johnson reported that his Wi-Fi signal dropped while orbiting Mars, NASA’s helpdesk was suddenly plunged into chaos. The frantic message arrived in the middle of the night: “Houston, we seem to have lost the Wi-Fi. No memes, no cat videos, help!”
The helpdesk, usually accustomed to questions about trajectory adjustments or software glitches, was unprepared for a ticket about internet connectivity issues 140 million miles from Earth. Lead technician Diane Murphy recalled, “At first, we thought it was a prank. But then we saw the location data—definitely orbiting Mars. Definitely no Wi-Fi.”
The ticket read: “Since I can’t stream my favorite Mars Rover playlist, I’m feeling a little ‘lost in space.’ Please advise.” Engineers scrambled to troubleshoot by remotely checking signal logs, rebooting satellites, and running diagnostics on the Mars relay network. The prevailing theory was an unfortunate solar flare had temporarily knocked out the orbiting hotspot.
Meanwhile, Dave tried all the classic fixes, including turning his helmet’s comm system off and on again, moving closer to the hull (better signal strength?), and even begging the onboard AI to “just find me a Starbucks Wi-Fi.”
Tech morale hit a new low during the outage. One helpdesk staffer was caught mumbling, “If we can put a rover on Mars, why can’t we get a decent signal?”
After six hours of digital dead zones, the Wi-Fi mysteriously returned. According to Diane, “We never quite figured out what fixed it. Dave did mention ‘offering up a sacrifice to the Wi-Fi gods,’ but we don’t keep tributes in the break room.”
Dave’s final comment before logging off was: “Glad to be back online. Now, who wants to join me for some zero-g online gaming? Just no lag, please.”
NASA has since issued a statement assuring the public that astronaut internet outages are “extremely rare,” though they did acknowledge the possibility of some Mars-based TikTok delays for the foreseeable future.