The video was shot and sent from the part of the spacecraft that was stranded in orbit and was only a short minute and fifty seconds long.

In that video, a semicircular landing module detached from the Golden Heart's spacecraft, dragging the light of a little flame and falling towards the thin atmosphere of Mars, and finally turned into a dot and disappeared into the edge of the Martian atmosphere......

As Lu Zhou guessed, as soon as the launch was successful, NASA announced the relevant news on its official website, and posted the video clips filmed by the Golden Heart on the Internet.

And what happened next was to be expected.

In just 10 minutes, the total length of the video is less than two minutes, and the number of views has skyrocketed, and finally reached the top three of the most popular videos on YouTube in real time.

After watching the footage in the video, there was silence in the conference room, and no one spoke.

After a long time, Chen Yunhai coughed lightly, broke the silence and said.

"We need to discuss what to do—"

"Nothing to negotiate, I said from the beginning that it would be enough to do the job at hand."

Closing the notebook on the table, Lu Zhou looked at Academician Yuan Huanmin, and after thinking for a moment, he continued to ask, "How long will it take for the living module of the Moon Palace to be ready?" ”

Academician Yuan hesitated for a moment and spoke.

"It's ready, and the testing will take another week."

"Then the next launch is scheduled for two weeks away!" As he spoke, Lu Zhou stuffed his notebook into his bag and stood up from the conference table, "Let's go and end the meeting!" ”

……

The successful landing of the Golden Heart won the United States great international prestige, and the whole of North America was plunged into a sea of jubilation.

The comment section of the video released by NASA on YouTube and its official website has been flooded by netizens around the world.

As if to vent the last time the frustration accumulated over the cooling system of the Lunemiya's core module, the New York Times deliberately placed a cartoon of boxing gloves with the Star-Spangled Banner and a triumphant gesture next to the news report.

Even the Washington Post, which has always been known for its rigor, rarely used the phrase "the greatest step in human history" to describe the success of the fire program.

In addition to the media coverage in North America, overseas media reports have also paid the highest attention to this matter.

This time, the BBC's evaluation, as always, is still from the standpoint of watching the show, and it is painless to say that NASA has the upper hand in this race.

At present, compared with Huaguo's Moon Palace plan, the Ares plan seems to be deeper.

Compared with helium-3 resources, which can only be used in unknown years and months, the abundant methane resources on Mars can be used as an energy source for liquid oxygen methane rocket engines.

It turns out that chemical propulsion technology is far from reaching the bottleneck, at least as evidenced by the BFS rocket. And the colony on Mars will also become a springboard for NASA to project spacecraft to other planets in the future.

The future of electric propulsion may be even bigger, but liquid oxygen methane rocket engines don't look bad either?

Just as the popularity of the Ares project was rising, Space-X announced that it would open a business with youtube and other video sites to regularly stream daily videos of Martian colonists on the Internet in a free format.

In an interview with the media, Musk solemnly promised that all the advertising revenue generated by the video will be used for space projects.

At the same time, the official websites of the White House and NASA have released a message to solicit the names of the Martian colonies from the American public, and set up an online poll to count everyone's opinions.

This activity aroused considerable enthusiasm among the North American people, and even people who are not usually interested in aerospace participated in this name collection activity with great interest.

In less than a day, the number of voters exceeded 30 million.

After a bit of sifting through and weeding out a few names that were obviously spoofs, the White House finally announced "New Virginia" as the name of the first Martian colony.

Historically, this is where British colonists began in North America.

The choice of this name for the Martian colony today is undoubtedly quite monumental.

Immediately after the name "New Virginia" was announced, NASA announced the next steps in the Ares program.

Before continuing to export migrants to Mars, the pioneers stationed on Mars will survey the methane gas reserves, metal deposits and other resources near the colony, and expand the scope of geological exploration activities to areas that cannot be reached by remotely controlled rovers to explore the solid carbon dioxide reserves of the Martian polar regions, evaluate the feasibility of artificially activating the greenhouse effect to restore the Martian atmosphere, and most importantly, the exploration of groundwater.

For now, the scales of victory seem to be tilting toward the eastern shore of the Pacific Ocean.

And just when North America was in a carnival because of the success of the Ares program, the lunar orbit construction committee on the other side of the Pacific Ocean was also under a lot of pressure.

Originally, at the beginning of the space station project, there was a lot of controversy in the industry about whether to choose the "Moon Palace" or the "Heavenly Palace", but now the breakthrough progress of the Ares program seems to have made the controversy even louder.

However, Lu Zhou, the chief designer of the Lunar Orbit Construction Committee, seems to have turned a deaf ear to these discussions.

The launch schedule for the Lunamiya living module component remains the same.

After the assembly of the living module is completed, the Moon Palace, which has been equipped with the functional module, node module, and experimental module, will be used as a complete lunar space station, floating in the "NRHO" orbit, which can be used by the ground command center to send researchers to station.

At the same time, this is also the last component of the first phase of the Moon Palace......

……

White House.

Office of the President.

The president, who had just returned from Congress, was sitting in his office chair flipping through the minutes, his face looking spirited.

At the previous meeting, the faces of the opposition parliamentarians were so deflated that even the midday steak became much more fragrant.

Just a week ago, opposition lawmakers were attacking him for overfunding the space program, but now few doubt that he is right.

The success of Project Ares is the right one!

Victory in the space race is right!

And the self who is leading the American people to victory is the greatest right!

Signing his name on the document in his hand, he couldn't help but sneer at the thought of the councillor who had tactfully pointed out to him at the meeting that he should be a little restrained.

"Why don't these idiots understand? Although space has cost a lot of money, it has stimulated the economy and created jobs, and I don't know what other ...... they are dissatisfied with"

Roosevelt's dam reinvigorated the American economy, and his rockets could do just as well.

Shaking his head, he tossed the signed budget aside and picked up the next document on the California fusion power plant.

However, just as he was about to peruse it, there was a knock at the door.

Putting down the papers in his hand, he cleared his throat and said "Please come in".

When he saw that it was Director Carson who appeared at the door, a big smile suddenly appeared on the president's face.

"Director Carson, it's a pleasure to meet you, please take a seat!"

Looking at the president with a big smile on his face, Carson's face was a little subtle, or he didn't know how to speak.

"Mr. President, I'm glad to meet you too......"

Ten fingers crossed on the table, the president, who was sitting in his office chair, said with a pleasant face: "It seems that you have something to say, do you have any good news to report to me?" ”

"No...... It may be the opposite of what you expected," Director Carson said with difficulty as he swallowed a mouthful of foam, and said with difficulty, "Our colonists may have encountered a little trouble......