The reason why Hoffman led the team to the North Pole to find water so soon was also because he knew that the company began to develop Martian real estate, and once a large number of Blue Star humans moved to Mars, water would be one of the most important resources.

Although the ecosystem technology developed by Magic Technology can effectively recycle the water in the living base, there will still be a loss of part of it.

This requires replenishment of water at regular intervals, although this interval is relatively long.

It is precisely for this reason that Du Qiu is cautious about long-range space activities, and of course, the aircraft completely controlled by intelligent robots has already flown towards the planets of the solar system.

Deep space exploration, led by artificial intelligence Stardust, is proceeding in an orderly manner, reaching as far as the Kuiper Belt at the edge of the solar system.

At an average speed of 3,000 kilometers per second, it only takes 17 days to fly from Blue Star to the edge of the solar system.

The existing exploration vehicle is a simple version of the Pterodactyl fighter and is named the Kunpeng Scientific Exploration Aerospace Aircraft.

It has eliminated most of the weapon loads, replaced them with various scientific instruments, and uses metallic hydrogen as an energy source, with a endurance of about 60 days.

The endurance of the Giant-class transport landing ship is far greater than that of these air-space fighters, and its reserves of metallic hydrogen energy are enough to support its endurance in years.

In the current orbit of the solar system, there is little need to worry about running out of energy.

As for rushing out of the solar system and flying across galaxies, Du Qiu has no plan for the time being until he solves the problem of the limit of human lifespan.

You can't have an expeditionary fleet, sailing and creating people at the same time, and by the time you cross the long void and reach another galaxy a few light-years or even tens of light-years away, the fleet members have changed generations.

This expedition did not make any sense to Du Qiu.

Think about it, at the speed of the current vehicle, flying to the nearest Proxima Centauri galaxy to the solar system is also 4 light years, which basically takes 400 years, how many generations will it take?

Rather than sending such a fleet, it is better to conduct research on two fronts, on the one hand, to increase the speed of aircraft, and on the other hand, to increase the lifespan limit of human beings.

When the two reach a certain equilibrium point, it makes sense to carry out such a transgalactic space exploration.

Du Qiu was full of confidence in the improvement of these two aspects, and judging from his understanding of the fourth-level civilization, there was still huge room for improvement in the speed of the aircraft.

Judging from the current situation of biological research, it is not impossible to increase the limit of human life expectancy.

In this round of global recruitment, Magic Technology has a focus, one of the key points is biomedical talents, the number is not limited, as many people apply.

The premise, of course, is to reach a certain level of knowledge, and you can't always ask for a cat or a dog to apply.

At the North Pole of Mars, after more than an hour of busyness, Hoffman's team completed the exploration of this open-pit salt mine.

Here, as Hoffman intuitively felt, the open-pit salt mine was associated with frozen water.

The entire salt mine is about 20,000 square meters in size and up to five meters deep, and this salt mine reserve is not small.

During their exploration, Hoffman and his team found clear traces of the impact of the current, and after 100 kilometers of northward travel, they came to a depression.

Here, it is noticeable to feel that the humidity is much greater than in other places.

This indicates that water vapor has been transpired into the air.

The group excitedly got busy again, and soon the engineering robot made a hole here and collected the core nearly 100 meters deep underground.

When the core was removed, everyone cheered.

The slender core rod has a considerable section of crystal clear frozen water!

This section is 30 meters long and has more than 10 meters of frozen soil on it, which means that there is a layer of frozen water up to 30 meters deep underground.

It can be said that it is this permafrost layer more than 10 meters thick that protects the frozen water underground and does not evaporate.

Of course, it is also because the temperature here at the North Pole of Mars is only -120°C, which will make it always frozen.

Hoffman had all of the ice cores stored in closed freezers and then explored the hollows.

In the end, it was found that under the entire 5 square kilometers of depression, there were frozen water layers of different depths.

The deepest layer of frozen water is seventy or eighty meters deep, and the shallowest is ten meters deep.

The data of these field explorations fully make up for the results of the previous remote sensing satellite tests of the National Space Administration of the United States.

There is no doubt that there is water at the North Pole of Mars.

Combined with the open-pit salt mines he had encountered before, Hoffman could basically determine that this area was once the sea, and when unknown reasons caused the Martian sea to evaporate.

The salt in the sea converges to form an open-pit salt mine, and the lower part of the depression retains some of the seawater and is permanently frozen.

According to normal speculation, there should be ancient Martian marine life in this frozen water layer, and whether it is a lower or higher life may need further research.

This is the work of the biochemical research team, but Hoffman is also vigilant, and the frozen water samples collected need to be properly disposed of.

In case there is some kind of virus component, it is a Resident Evil for the living base in a closed state.

Fortunately, the company has long developed a rigorous extraterrestrial biochemical disposal process to ensure that humans can safely come into contact with the extraterrestrial environment when exploring planets other than the blue star.

Zhao Mingchuan said excitedly: "Teacher, this is really an ancient ocean, but I don't know when this ocean disappeared."

However, with this layer of frozen water, we humans can survive on Mars for a long time. ”

"Don't get too excited, these frozen water samples need to be handled through a safe process to ensure that there are no potentially unknown microorganisms or viruses, and you must remember this point, and don't get carried away by the momentary discovery and forget the safety regulations."

Zhao Mingchuan immediately replied loudly: "Understood." ”

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Blue Star, Southeast Asia, Sumatra.

November 29, 2022, 7 a.m.

On a quiet, peaceful morning, in the fishing village by the sea, the early fishermen had already eaten breakfast, packed up their fishing boats and sailed out of the harbor.

The sun shines warmly on this beachfront, and some children are busy catching the sea after the low tide in the morning, occasionally laughing happily because they have picked up good seafood.

At 7:12 a.m., people suddenly felt a large earthquake tremble, which lasted for about 19 seconds.

Patong County, by the sea, was the epicenter, and in these 19 seconds, almost all the houses collapsed!

Almost at the same time, in Xingguo, 460 kilometers northeast of Padang County, the whole city felt the power from the center of the earth, the earth shook, and the unstable houses collapsed in an instant.

In this shining pearl of Southeast Asia, in the past 19 seconds, a building with dozens of floors in the central business district has collapsed and leaned against a nearby building, causing the building to also tilt to a considerable extent, and it is likely to collapse in the aftershocks later.

Such a violent earthquake has never been encountered in the history of the Star Country.

In the past, even if there were some magnitude 7 earthquakes on the island of Sumatra, the high-rise buildings in the central business district here in the star country would be over after a shake.

This time, a building was shaken down, which shows that the magnitude of the 19-second earthquake definitely exceeded 7.

On the other side, in Jugang, the capital of Sumatra province, 530 kilometers southeast of Padang County, the losses were even worse than those of Star Country.

Originally, Sumatra was an island with frequent earthquakes, and it was often a major earthquake of magnitude 6 or 7, and most of the buildings in the port were designed to resist earthquakes.

Therefore, the residents here are not afraid of earthquakes, but are afraid of earthquake-induced tsunamis, and usually run high after an earthquake to avoid a possible tsunami.

This time, however, the earthquake was different from the previous ones, firstly it did not occur in the usual middle of the sea, and secondly, its epicenter was only 6 kilometers from the surface.

Finally, the seismic waves traveled far longer than any previous one, and lasted for 19 seconds, almost second only to the first major earthquake before the landfall of the Dongying Islands.