Pang Xuelin wore an EVA spacesuit and stood on the top of a small hill.

It's noon, the Martian sky is a hazy yellowish-brown, there is more hematite on the surface of Mars, the color is reddish, this light is reflected into the atmosphere, and there are a lot of dust particles in the Martian atmosphere, so the Martian sky looks a little close to the color of sandstorms on Earth.

But in the morning or evening, the Martian atmosphere turns red or pink again. This is because the Martian atmosphere is more receptive to infrared light with longer wavelengths, and because of the reflection of particles in the atmosphere and the Martian surface, it will appear this color.

The rover was parked at the foot of the mountain and charged, and on a whim, Pang Xuelin climbed this small hill to enjoy the beauty of the Red Planet.

From afar, you can see a variety of beautiful streamlined hills located in the desert, most of these hills are gentle and beautiful, which is the result of hundreds of millions of years of wind-blown sand.

After entering the world of "The Martian" for more than a month, Pang Xuelin had the leisure to appreciate this desolate and lonely alien world for the first time.

In the past few days, Pang Xuelin set off at dawn every day, washed and eaten, tested the air composition in the car, checked the oxygen tank and replaced the carbon dioxide filter, and then drove for about three hours, found a place to park, and carried out an EVA, took out the solar panels in the car, and charged the rover together with the solar panels on the roof.

After about four hours of charging, he re-EVA again, put away the battery panels, and drove until dark, finding a place to park and rest.

Life on long journeys is boring and regular.

After staying at the top of the hill for nearly half an hour, Pang Xuelin returned to the narrow rover with some boredom.

The interior space of the rover is not large, and the food and equipment occupy a lot of space, barely leaving Pang Xuelin with a small bed that can lie on people.

The heat provided by the RTG is very powerful, which can keep the rover basically at a constant temperature of 25~30 degrees.

Taking off his bulky EVA spacesuit, Pang Xuelin can wear a T-shirt and pants and sleep in a blanket.

This kind of life like that of a truck driver on Earth is not comfortable, and the most troublesome thing is how to deal with excrement.

There are toilets in the rover, but they only have a sewage tank for emergency use and are not connected to the car's water circulation system.

So Pang Xuelin can only deal with the problem of urine and urine separately, the large one is relatively simple and can be solved in the toilet, and the small one He specially prepared a bottle, and after solving it, pour the urine into the water circulation system, and then ......

Forget it, don't talk about it, the author feels disgusting.

has only been away from the perching cabin for three days, and Pang Xuelin is a little nostalgic for the life of the perching cabin.

In three days, Pang Xuelin crossed the Asidalia Plain and entered the hilly area, but there was at least one to two days to travel from the destination.

It was a delta area that hit the riverbed and was the landing area for the Mars Pathfinder.

But finding the location of the Mars Pathfinder is not an easy task.

The navigation beacon of the perching module is only forty kilometers away, and although there is a relatively complete topographic map on the computer, if he wants to rely on landmarks to navigate, Pang Xuelin finds that he takes it for granted.

Because of the landmarks that appeared on the map, he couldn't find them at all.

The compass is even more meaningless, because there is no magnetic field on Mars at all.

However, Pang Xuelin has his own way, and Phobos (Phobos), who rises in the west and sets in the east twice a day, is his best partner.

Although it is not possible to use Frapos for accurate navigation, it is possible to measure the approximate bearing.

That's why he was able to make it all the way to Chris Plains.

But after entering the Chris Plains, Pang Xuelin found that trouble was coming.

This great desert is far away, and everywhere is a flat land of dusk, and there is no reference at all.

Driving out for more than ten kilometers or twenty kilometers, it's like staying where you are.

Pang Xuelin drove for a day on the Chriss Plain with some trepidation in reference to Ferpos, but the expected Ares Valley never appeared.

Pang Xuelin wondered if he was driving in the wrong direction, and it wasn't until the morning of the fifth day that Pang Xuelin felt that he was running at the right time.

Because he found an excellent reference - the Hamel Impact Crater.

The crater, named after the Piper's fairy tale town, is 10 kilometers in diameter and coordinates 20.2 degrees north latitude and 32.8 degrees west longitude.

So Pang Xuelin knew that he was not far from the Mars Pathfinder.

On the afternoon of the fifth day, Pang Xuelin drove the rover and finally crossed the Chris Plains and entered the Ares Valley.

The road started to get rough, and a few rocks of different sizes appeared on the road from time to time, but luckily, the rover's chassis was high enough for decent off-road performance.

That night, Pang Xuelin parked the rover near a boulder as his camp, and slept very steadily.

Early in the morning of the sixth day, Pang Xuelin recuperated his spirit and began to slowly search for it in the Ares Valley.

After a day of searching, Pang Xuelin finally found the landmark he was looking for - Twin Peaks.

Twin Peaks is a very famous photo taken by the Mars Pathfinder, consisting of two hills that are very close together, and the Mars Pathfinder's... The landing site, exactly one kilometer west of the twin peaks.

Pang Xuelin drove all the way, and finally found the Mars Pathfinder tightly wrapped in airbags and half buried in the sand not far from the west side of the twin peaks.

"I've finally found you!"

Pang Xuelin couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief.

Before leaving, he had made an agreement with Watney to search the Ares Valley for a week at most, and if he couldn't find the Mars Pathfinder, he would return immediately.

Now, it only took him two days to find his target, which is extremely smooth.

The Mars Pathfinder is a tetrahedron wrapped in an airbag, and when it flies a certain distance to Mars, the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft begins to cruise in preparation for the release of the parachute. At an altitude of 5 to 11 kilometers above Mars, a huge parachute carrying air bags spreads and then plummets down. At a height of 300 meters, the flying bag automatically inflates and expands...... Finally, it detached from the parachute, bounced and landed on Mars, and after the landing was completed, the airbag would deflate, exposing the Mars Pathfinder inside.

The Mars Pathfinder consists of a landing module and a Mars Sojourner rover, which is immovable and can roam at a turtle speed of 2 feet per minute to detect the rock composition on Mars. He was the first rover in human history and played an extremely important role in the exploration of Mars.

Pang Xuelin found the Sojourner rover that had been dormant for nearly 40 years 30 meters from the landing module.

However, the most important communication equipment is still in the landing module. The landing module is too large for Pang Xuelin to move at all, he only needs to move the communication system and the Sojourner rover.

Why bring the Sojourner rover? The reason is very simple, if people on Earth want to contact the Mars Pathfinder, they can only send fixed instructions, such as letting the rover move forward, backward, left and right, which has no meaning for Pang Xuelin.

He needed to translate that command into understandable words, so a rover with a rotating camera was the best choice.

When the time comes, all he needs to do is make the corresponding alphabet and use the rover's rotating camera to talk to Project Ares Command.

Everything went smoothly.

Pang Xuelin tied the rover to the landing capsule with a hinge, and then drove the rover to pull the landing module out from under the sand.

He then used the various tools he carried in the vehicle to separate the main system of the landing module from the heaviest soft landing system.

Finally, he dropped the 10-kilogram Sojourner rover into the rover. The main system of the landing module, which weighed nearly 100 kilograms, was placed on the body of the rover.

Pang Xuelin is very glad that the gravitational acceleration of Mars is only half that of Earth, otherwise he would not have been able to do this job at all.