A convoy of five lunar rovers is heading straight for the far side of the moon at Kyushu Station, a convoy of five lunar rovers.

The so-called far side of the Moon is because the rotation of the Moon is synchronized with its revolution (tidal lock, both 27 days.47 seconds), so it always faces the same side towards the Earth.

Because of this, at any given time, we can only see the front side of the moon on Earth.

PS: Due to the balance movement of the Moon, 59% of the entire surface of the Moon can be observed from the Earth.

On the 4th, the Soviet Union successfully launched the Luna-3 probe, which flew to the far side of the moon and successfully took the first fax photo of the far side of the moon at an altitude of 60 kilometers ~ 70 kilometers away from the moon.

As the probe approached the Earth, it sent a fax photo of the far side of the moon back to the ground receiving station with radio waves, and thus for the first time, humans witnessed the true face of the far side of the moon.

In the photo, the far side of the moon is mostly a lunar land plateau, while the lunar sea plain and crater are less.

The Moon Sea, discovered in the Northern Hemisphere, was named the Moscow Sea by the Soviet Union, a circular lunar sea with a diameter of about 300 kilometers.

Some of the craters found in the Northern Hemisphere are named Cholde Crater, Bruno Crater, Lomonosov Crater, Curie Crater, Kraumert Crater, Zuchong Crater, etc.

In the southern hemisphere, the craters are named Joule crater, Vilnu crater and Tsiolkovsky crater.

Of course, Lao Mei, who participated in the space race, later launched five orbiters orbiting the moon, and constantly sent back fax photos of the front and back sides of the moon.

Many new names have been added to the map of the far side of the moon that has been compiled and published accordingly.

This time, the convoy departed from the Kyushu Station Lunar Exploration Base and targeted the area around the Kraunmert crater, which is located on the far side of the moon.

There are still 27 kilometers to reach the theoretical edge of the far side of the moon.

When you look out of the rover window, you'll find a gray glow, with a reflectivity only slightly higher than that of old asphalt.

The convoy continued to move forward, and Station Master Hu, who was in the same car as Hua Kejing, said from the side: "There are more than 33,000 craters on the moon with a diameter greater than 1,000 meters. Located near Antarctica, the Bailey crater is 295 kilometers in diameter and can fit the entire island of Hainan. The deepest mountain is the Newton crater, which is 8,788 meters deep......"

"Mountains and deep valleys are stacked on top of each other, and there is indeed a special wind."

Hua Kejing smiled, the first time he really stepped on the land of the moon, he was still quite emotional.

"But the surface temperature of the moon is quite unfriendly, and the temperature difference between day and night is too great......

Hu Zongrong then introduced, while Hua Kejing nodded and glanced at the temperature monitoring instrument, which displayed a value of -23.1 degrees Celsius.

Because there is no atmosphere, and the heat capacity and thermal conductivity of the lunar surface are very low, the temperature on the surface of the moon can reach as high as 127 degrees Celsius during the day, where the sun shines vertically, and at night, the temperature can drop to -183 degrees Celsius.

Now this temperature is in the relatively mild range.

"This has had a big impact on our production operations, especially the development projects in the Lake of Dreams, the Apennines, and the Plato crater area...... Hu continued.

......

After about four hours, the convoy finally reached 7.34 kilometers southwest of Kraumert Crater.

"Here, everyone, this is the test site we have explored before, and the bauxite alumina is as high as more than 70%, which is very much in line with our appetite for new machinery."

Under the greeting and guidance of Hu Zongrong, everyone got off the bus one after another and came to a mine pit that had undergone foundation remediation.

Hua Kejing's gaze looked through the helmet mask to the bottom of the pit, where two massive pieces of machinery were lying solidly on the bottom.

In fact, both iron and aluminum are abundant on the surface of the moon.

Taking iron as an example, the 5-centimeter-thick layer of sand on the surface of the moon alone contains hundreds of millions of tons of iron, while the entire lunar surface has an average of 10 meters of sand, and it is easy to mine and smelt.

Of course, the deep pit in front of me is a mining area with a high abundance of aluminum, and the purpose of Hua Kejing's visit today is to inspect the work of automated integrated space mining robots.

The technical architecture of the automated integrated space mining robot is derived from the joint research results of the Department of Advanced Mechanical and Vehicle Engineering and the Department of Advanced Chemical and Materials Engineering under the Level 8 [Engineering Research Institute] in the virtual world.

The final landing work is completed by the design and manufacturing industry chain of Muyu Aerospace's engineering group.

In fact, the space mining robot in front of you is composed of two mechanical systems with a high degree of automation.

Among them, the function of robot A is exploration and excavation.

With a strong energy supply system, it is even able to work for long periods of time even in the depths of the ground independently.

"Boom~"

A "mechanical monster" roared into action, roaring into the surface at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Although the moon has no atmosphere, and everyone cannot hear the roar, the violent vibrations can still be clearly transmitted to everyone through the ground under their feet, and the scene is very shocking.

"This area has been fully surveyed prior to the mining plan, including geological structure and resource deposits......

In Hu Zongrong's introduction, another series of vibrations came from under his feet, and this time it was another robot B that appeared with the exploration and excavation robot.

The function of Robot B is on-site smelting, and it can closely follow the footsteps of Robot A, directly using the collected ore to smelt into metal materials on the surface or underground, and carry out extremely efficient resource collection.

According to the design program, the engineers set up a new process for lunar surface aluminum smelting for the automated, integrated space mining robot.

The specific method is to first crush the moonrock, heat and melt it at 1700 °C, and then cool it to 100 °C to make a multi-mass ball, and then crush it, and add 100 °C sulfuric acid to it, and the aluminum element can be leached.

Then, after the silicide was removed by centrifugation and filtration, it was pyrolyzed at a temperature of 900 °C to obtain a mixture of alumina and sodium sulfate.

Finally, the sodium sulphate is washed away and dried, and then further electrolyzed to obtain the final product, pure aluminum.

Of course, this set of processes is not difficult to see, but to present it in an automated mechanical equipment, it requires extremely exquisite industrial design and manufacturing capabilities.

"With such a reliable mining robot, our lunar resource mining work is much easier."

"It seems to be able to liberate our productivity!"

"I don't know if the mining of other mineral resources can also be automated."

Seeing that the two robots successfully completed a series of tasks such as autonomous excavation, collection, smelting, and molding, Hu Zongrong and several other engineers from the lunar base were overjoyed.

"It's coming." Hua Kejing nodded.

He went on to tell the crowd that the Earth's engineering team is setting up different collection procedures for different mining robots for different mineral resources.

This includes metallic iron, titanium, copper, and other non-metallic deposits.

……

Three days later, Hua Kejing returned to the Kunlun Earth-Moon Space Orbit space station in the manned spacecraft Kun.

After spending 18 hours on the space station, Hua Kejing returned to Earth, ending his first real-world space trip.

At the same time, the mainstream media in China rushed to report the research results of Muyu Aerospace during this trip to the moon for the first time.

Voices from various international aerospace camps also spoke highly of the development project of lunar minerals, and believed that this was an important attempt to promote the concept and action of interstellar resource development, and had a positive impetus to the entire industry, which was an exciting thing.

……

I salute every friend who has been with me all the way, thank you for your support!

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