Adelaide Brooke was an English astronaut who captained the Bowie Base One mission, Earth's disastrous first attempt to colonise Mars. Having achieved many space milestones, her example would inspire her granddaughter, Susie Fontana Brooke, to pilot the first lightspeed ship and begin a legacy of interstellar exploration that subsequent generations would build upon.
Early life and education[]
Adelaide Brooke was born on 12 May 1999 in Finchley, North London. She lost her parents at the age of ten in the Dalek invasion of 2009. After the sky had changed and the panic on the streets began, her father took hold of her and brought her to an attic where she could stay while he looked for her mother. Adelaide, who would never see her parents again, was discovered by a flying Dalek, who silently studied her before gliding away. She knew that night she would one day follow it out into space, but not out of revenge. (DW: "The Waters of Mars")
The Dalek invasion of 2009 was erased from history by the cracks in time, but some of its consequences - including the New Dalek Paradigm - remained. (DW: "Victory of the Daleks", "Flesh and Stone")
She was brought up by her grandmother, and from a very early age showed an interest in space exploration. She studied at Cambridge University and achieved a first honours degree in combined physics and mathematics. She transferred to Rice University in 2017, where she earned her doctorate degree in physics.
Astronaut career[]
Following her fellowship at Rice, she began working at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. She became the first NASA candidate selected that was not a citizen of the United States. After an intense two-year training programme, followed by numerous shuttle missions, she was controversially - due to her young age and relative inexperience within NASA - selected to head up Project Pitt Stop, a project which would use the Moon as a refuelling base for further planetary exploration. The project was highly successful, with unmanned exploratory shuttles being dispatched to Neptune and Jupiter. The data obtained by these missions increased humanity's knowledge of these planets significantly.
At the age of 42, she became the first woman to land on Mars, a landmark in space history, while part of a three-person team. She campaigned tirelessly to choose Mars as the location for colonisation over the Moon. She felt that the similarities Mars shared with Earth would make it more hospitable and, as a result of this, she became the most obvious candidate to captain Bowie Base One.
She met Margaret Cain in April 2051, during the time in which Cain became the second female Briton to land on the moon. Brooke, the first female Briton on the moon, developed a mutual respect and admiration for Cain. She requested Cain on board the Bowie Base One mission and Cain accepted.
Bowie Base One[]
(DW: "The Waters of Mars")