Mai Dong's eyes were firmly on the eyepiece, slowly adjusting the magnification knob, and the optical tracking system in the Discovery module was a set of difficult things to operate, it was once used to assist the rendezvous and docking of the Orion spacecraft, and this system was basically discontinued after the Canadian Super Arm was put into use - the Super Arm could directly capture the Orion spacecraft for precise docking, and the original optical tracking was no longer needed.

The orbit of the Mars joint space station is more than 300 kilometers away from the earth's surface, and it is difficult to lock on to the target for earth observation at this distance, and the difference is a thousand miles, and the lens can deviate by tens or even hundreds of kilometers with a slight shake, and the scanning range drawn by Tang Yue is only 95 kilometers long, which means that if Mai Dong accidentally shakes his hand, the lens field of view may jump to 108,000 miles away.

The girl slowly twisted the knob, dime by corner and dime second to adjust the direction of the optical tracking system, the surface of Mars all over the ravine flashed quickly from her field of vision, the diffracted data in the eyepiece jumped rapidly, the computer marked the exact latitude and longitude of the target position with green numbers, the laser diffracted the numbers on the eyepiece, Mai Dong adjusted the magnification of the camera to the lowest, in this state the lens has the largest field of view, suitable for finding targets.

In Mai Dong's eyes, all she could see were crimson sand dunes and crisscrossing black shadows, she couldn't see the Martian stray dogs, nor could she see the Kunlun station, those targets were too small, far beyond the human eye's ability to distinguish...... In fact, the width of the Great Wall of four or five meters is far from the accuracy of the naked eye in low-earth orbit, and if astronauts really want to see the Great Wall on the International Space Station, the latter may have to install high-power light bulbs at night.

"12 degrees 54 minutes north latitude, 87 degrees east longitude...... 87 degrees east longitude, this is the coordinates of the Kunlun station, so the location of the Chelome is here...... "The girl searched for the landing site of the Cherome probe according to the latitude and longitude, and the location of the old cat when she last contacted the space station was the landing site of the Chelome, so she will start her search from here."

According to the speed of Martian stray dogs, the old cat can advance an average of 30 kilometers a day, and their last contact was 24 hours ago, which means that the most likely position of the old cat is within 30 kilometers of the rover's landing site and return path.

Mai Dong divided the rectangular area drawn by Tang Yue into six sections, each thirty kilometers long, and she was ready to search by block.

The part of the Chelome probe landing site is the highest priority for searching.

"Mai Dong?"

"Uh-huh, screw, I'm familiarizing myself with the system......" Mai Dong's eyes took off the eyepiece and pulled out the keyboard to enter the correction parameters, "This thing is a bit old." ”

The optical tracking system in the Discovery cabin is indeed a set of ancient things, using a straight-through optical path, no optical fiber, no display and no precision servo motor - if the Dawn cabin is not damaged, Mai Dong can use the advanced ground remote sensing system, the scanning area is just a few lines of parameters, a few clicks of the mouse, the lens will automatically focus, the image will be automatically entered into the computer, there is no need for such troublesome manual operation.

"Can you do it?"

"It's done." Mai Dong raised his eyebrows and smiled slyly, "Do you want to have faith in me...... Who am I? ”

She tried to adjust the magnification, found a rocky beach in her field of view, and then pointed the crosshair in the center of the camera at a boulder and pressed the button.

The photo entered the computer's monitor, the girl carefully checked the clarity of the photo, got closer and squinted her eyes and looked up and down, she was testing the reliability of the system, so she randomly found a target to take a picture, Mai Dong tapped the keyboard to switch photos.

"Hmm...... A bit of ghosting, is it a focal length problem? ”

Mai Dong shook his head, adjusted the lens again, then tested the system, continued to take pictures, repeatedly compared the clarity of the photos, and adjusted the state of this thing little by little.

"It's been exposed for too long."

"The image could be sharpened a little more."

"The resolution could be a little bit higher...... A little bit higher......"

Mai Dong debugs the equipment in his hand like an old photographer and strives for perfection, the United Space Station can only pass over the Ihidi Plain every hour or so, and in order to save time, Mai Dong must take as many photos as possible during each window.

The joint space station of Mars flew silently in orbit and gradually approached the plains of Ihidi.

"Girl, where have you been?"

"I'm already close to the sky over the Ihidi Plains, the optical tracking system is ready, and I expect to enter the active scanning area in one minute." Mai Dong clinged to the eyepiece and took a deep breath, all the details had been adjusted to the best, she stared at the diffracted parameters in the eyepiece instead of the image that swept by at high speed, because the image was a wasteland, and only the parameters could tell her if she was aiming at the target.

In a sense, Mai Dong was shooting blindly, she couldn't see the target she was looking for, and could only press the shutter based on the location data.

"Tang Yue." Mai Dong suddenly called him.

"Huh?"

"Do you know what I'm thinking right now?"

"What are you thinking?"

"It's an amazing feeling, I think Mars is like a giant microorganism, like a bacterial yeast single cell or something, and I'm holding a microscope looking at this huge cell, and it's like taking a lab class in college, looking at specimens on a glass slide." "I can see every detail of this huge cell, the proteins, the phosphate groups on its cell membrane, ......

Giant microbes? Tang Yue was stunned, these two words can also be combined?

"Really, I'm not looking at a celestial object with a telescope right now, I'm looking at a giant ...... with a microscope" The girl paused and found a word, "Life." ”

Tang Yue shook his head, he obviously couldn't understand Mai Dong's feelings in Kunlun Station, he could only drag the solar panels back and forth, in his eyes Mars was a boundless saline-alkali land. Li Bai once said that he didn't know the true face of Lushan, only because he was in this mountain, if he was also on the space station in low earth orbit, he might be able to understand the girl's thoughts - Mars is not a dead and exhausted celestial body, but a huge rhythmic life.

Of course, with Tang Yue's artistic cells and ideological height, most people will evaluate that this is just a mud egg.

"Twenty seconds left to enter the active scanning area, I'm going to cut contact." Mai Dong noticed the computer's prompt, "Good luck to me." ”

"Good luck."

Mai Dong took off his headphones, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath.

Don't shake your hands.

Don't shake your hands.

Mai Dong said to himself silently.