This is a real-time simulated deep space mission control interface. The main content is a 3D visualisation, which is not directly accessible, but all telemetry data and mission information is available through text panels.
Use Tab to navigate through interactive elements. Press Enter or Space to activate buttons and expand or collapse telemetry panels. Press Escape to close any open dialog. Use arrow keys to scroll through panel content.
The status bar at the bottom announces mission phase changes as they occur. The interface is organised into three regions: the left column contains telemetry data panels, the right column contains mission data panels including photographs and logs, and the bottom bar shows overall mission status. Each telemetry panel can be expanded or collapsed.
To hear the crew biography, find the button labelled "Open Crewman MC biography" in the Crew Status panel. To send a message, find the button labelled "Send message to Crewman MC". To open the interface guide tour, find the button labelled "Open interface guide".
Mehzeb Chowdhury (MC) serves as the sole occupant of The Solivaga.
While his earthly body faced the profound challenges of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS), a condition that anchored his physical form to Earth, his spirit was always oriented towards the stars.
Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME/CFS) is a debilitating, multi-system neuroimmune disease where the body’s energy production fails. Its hallmark is Post-Exertional Malaise (PEM), a devastating “crash” where minimal exertion, like a short conversation, triggers a systemic collapse. For patients, it feels like a permanent, severe flu combined with a cellular battery that refuses to recharge, turning every movement into a calculated risk of life-altering relapse.
Common symptoms include unrefreshing sleep, brain fog, and chronic pain. However, the disease’s reach is broader, often causing orthostatic intolerance, the inability to stand, and extreme sensory hypersensitivities where light and sound feel like physical assaults. In very severe cases, patients may experience localized paralysis, seizures, or the inability to swallow, requiring darkened rooms and feeding tubes to survive in a state of total sensory deprivation.
This living death systematically erases a person’s world. Roughly 75% of patients cannot work, and 25% are housebound or bedridden. Careers, social bonds, and personal identities are stripped away, replaced by isolation and financial ruin. As the world moves forward, patients are left behind in a struggle for functional survival, battling a disease that steals their future while remaining largely invisible to a society that often looks away. Recovery is virtually unheard of, occurring in less than 5% of cases.
Millions of people around the world live with ME/CFS, many of them in silence. If this is the first time you are learning about this disease, we gently ask that you take a moment to search for it, to read the stories of those who endure it, and to understand what it takes from them. Awareness is the first step. Beyond that, the ME/CFS community needs advocates, donors, and simply people who believe them. However you are able to help — whether through supporting research charities, sharing information, or just listening — it matters more than you know.
As a researcher, Mehzeb dedicated his life to understanding how we might solve mysteries in the vacuum of space, laying the groundwork for justice and science beyond our atmosphere. The Solivaga is the culmination of that passion. It is a digital vessel designed to carry his work where his body could not follow.
Launched as a simulation that calculates real-time trajectories across the next half-century, Crewman MC is his avatar, a quiet presence crossing the solar system on behalf of everyone who has been told their limitations define them.
This project exists for Mehzeb, but also for the millions of people around the world living with ME/CFS, and for anyone navigating life with a disability that the world does not always see or choose to understand. The Solivaga is a small, stubborn reminder that we are here. That our contributions are real. That our curiosity and our ambitions do not diminish because our bodies work differently.
We are not invisible. And we will not go quietly.
As the simulation charts its course towards the solar system’s edge by 2068, Mehzeb will remain on duty. Even if the architect is no longer here to watch the screen, the mission will continue, an automated witness to the fact that someone cared enough to build it, and that those like him deserve to be remembered.