EDIT: Made a mistake, Dr. Kapoor ordered the imagery but in the title I said Venkat. Got those names confused
In chapter 6 of the Martian this exchange happens.
> “So what do we do, then? He’s not going to decompose. He’ll be there
forever.”
“Not forever,
” Teddy said. “Within a year, he’ll be covered in sand
from normal weather activity.”
“A year?” Venkat said, rising to his feet. “That’s ludicrous. We can’t
wait a year for this.”
“Why not? Ares 5 won’t even launch for another five years. Plenty of
time.”
Venkat took a deep breath and thought for a moment.
“Ok, consider this,
” he said. “Sympathy for Watney’s family is really
high. Ares 6 could bring the body back. We don’t say that’s the purpose
of the mission, but we make it clear that would be part of it. If we framed
it that way, we’d get more support in Congress. But not if we wait a year.
In a year, people won’t care any more.”
Teddy rubbed his chin. “Hmm…”
Mindy stared at the ceiling. She had little else to do. The 3am shift
was pretty dull. Only a constant stream of coffee kept her awake.
Monitoring the status of satellites around Mars sounded like an
exciting proposition when she took the transfer. But the satellites tended
to take care of themselves. Her job turned out to be sending emails as
imagery became available.
“Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering,
” she grumbled to
herself. “And I’m working in an all-night photo booth.”
She sipped her coffee.
A flicker on her screen announced another set of images were ready
for dispatch. She checked the name on the work order. Venkat Kapoor.
Posting the data directly to internal servers, she composed an email to
Dr. Kapoor. As she entered the latitude and longitude of the image, she
recognized the numbers.
“31.2°N, 28.5°W… Acidalia Planitia… Ares 3?”
Out of curiosity, she brought up the first of the 17 images.
As she suspected, it was the Ares 3 site. She’d heard they were going
to image it. Slightly ashamed of herself, she scoured the image for any
sign on Mark Watney’s dead body. After a minute of fruitless searching,
she was simultaneously relieved and disappointed.
This isn’t cut up at all or a different chapter or anything to suggest that some amount of time has passed. It’s super unclear what happens here. The director of NASA has been disallowing requests to image Ares III for a long time. Following a discussion with Mindy (Venkat) he appears to lightly contemplate it but nothing more. There’s not a super clear passage of time here although Teddy isn’t there any more so some amount of time has passed before she gets new satellite imagery. She recognizes the coordinates and realizes they’re the images she’s been wanting.
But how? It’s not explained at all how this occurs and Mindy clearly didn’t know that they were imaging this sector of Mars but also doesn’t really appear shocked that the images came in. What changed in between these scenes to have the imagery come in?
I’m assuming no one knows and it’s just a small bit of literary weirdness that wasn’t caught in editing but curious if the author has spoken on this or if anyone knows/has better ideas than me.
by FrigidVeins