Jefferson is the technical director of the Kennedy Space Center, responsible for satellite data analysis and professional mentoring for interns. （）

At this point, he was dropping a paper on the stage and turned around and walked towards the technology center.

The paper was recommended by his assistant and was based on the research of an intern. Every year, NASA recommends a certain number of outstanding students for internships here, and the space center will provide some assistance for their research.

One of the students studied the subject of human origins, and his topic was "On Ancient Chinese Legends and Conjectures on the Origin of Mankind".

The student believes that China has a 5,000-year-old civilization legend, and the origin of human beings is most likely hidden in it.

In China, the real written history is actually no more than 3,000 years, that is, starting from the Xia Dynasty, and the history before it is more passed down through myths and legends.

The student thinks that in these myths, prehistoric civilizations may be described. The war between the Yellow Emperor Yandi and Chiyou was very likely to wipe out a completely different human race, and at that time, perhaps technology was more advanced than in modern times.

"It's all, what does this have to do with the space center? Came to us to study the origins of mankind? Could it be that he thinks that prehistoric humans immigrated to alien planets? ”

For prehistoric civilizations, Jefferson happened to know some core secrets, and the U.S. government invested a lot of manpower and material resources in this area.

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There is evidence that the closest prehistoric civilization to modern human civilization is the Atlantean civilization, as evidenced by the exquisite sculptures housed in NASA's underground warehouse.

Jefferson was not interested in the paper at all, and he hoped that he would find good seedlings among the intern students and bring fresh blood to the space center.

Over the years, NASA has not developed well.

Due to the collapse of the former Soviet Union and the tightening of the national budget, NASA's research projects have been cut again and again, and since the successful moon landing, NASA has begun to decline.

The Apollo program, which the government spent billions of dollars to complete, as well as the spacecraft used in the Saturn program, have not been used since 1970. After the end of the Apollo program, NASA's budget was drastically reduced, while the bureaucracy within the agency remained unchanged, resulting in the current state of inadequacy.

The U.S. government had to choose to work with the Russians to build the ISS, and even NASA had to rely on Russian launch vehicles to provide services to the ISS. In Jefferson's view, this is nothing short of a disgrace.

But there is no way to do it, the explosion of two space shuttles in a row, the government even stopped research and development in this area, and now, even the Chinese have caught up.

They achieved manned spaceflight, their lunar rover landed on the moon, they also launched satellites to Mars, oh my God, how did they run to the front all of a sudden?

China's leaders proposed an air-space strategy, which made Jefferson feel very nervous, as if he had seen the former Soviet Union more than 50 years ago, with vigor and momentum.

This is the first time that a Chinese lunar rover has landed on the moon for the first time in more than 40 years, which is a very remarkable thing, and we should have a sense of urgency.

As he walked, Jefferson thought, "Good thing we still have Curiosity."

Curiosity is a rover launched by NASA at the end of 2011, it successfully landed on the surface of Mars and fell into a crater as planned, and Curiosity's successful landing on Mars is the most complex space mission ever completed by robots.

The main purpose of the Curiosity rover is to explore whether there is a suitable environment for life on Mars.

It is more advanced than the Opportunity and Spirit rovers that landed on Mars in 2004 and is powered by nuclear fuel.

Powered by nuclear fuel plutonium, Curiosity can carry more exploration equipment and has greater continuous travel capabilities on the surface of Mars.

The Curiosity project was initially expected to cost about $1 billion, but it ended up costing a whopping $2.5 billion, making it the most expensive Mars exploration to date.

Many years have passed, and Curiosity has lived up to NASA's expectations, and it has survived strongly, sending a huge amount of information to Earth:

It was a barren world, Mars may have had water at the same time, but now there is no life on it, its red appearance hanging in the starry sky may be tempting, but in reality, it is completely unsuitable for human life.

The information that Curiosity sent back day after day was much the same, except for the sand and gravel on Mars, and sometimes it could find some water damage, but it was most likely left over from tens of thousands of years ago, and these images made NASA experts very frustrated.

As early as a year ago, Jefferson had delegated the work of image analysis to the people below, and his patience had been exhausted, and he had also begun to bureaucratize the work of the space agency for many years.

However, just now when I was looking at the materials in the office, the assistant made an urgent call, and they made a major discovery.

In the analysis room, the assistant pointed out more than a dozen images in a row, all of which were sent back by Curiosity, which was a record of its walking trajectory on Mars over the years.

The assistant seemed agitated, his speech was visibly incoherent, and Jefferson had to interrupt him by pouring him a glass of water to moisten his throat and calm his mind.

Although calm on the surface, Jefferson knew in his heart that the assistant must have made a major discovery, otherwise he would not have behaved like this. Parker had been carefully cultivated by himself.

"Sir, look here, here, and here, this is the information from Curiosity in 2011, '13, '15, and these ten pictures were taken at intervals of 150 days, 6 hours, 37 minutes and 20 seconds. Did you find anything special about these pictures? ”

Jefferson rubbed his eyes vigorously, he was tired of these pictures. Over the years, the Curiosity has sent back a huge number of pictures, more than 100,000, and every time I see these pictures, Jefferson gets a little dizzy, which is a professional reaction.

Parker clearly understood Jefferson's feelings, and he didn't expect an answer from his teacher, but continued to speak.

Parker drew a circle in the upper left corner of each of the ten images, which were ordinary stone seeds on Mars, which can be seen everywhere in the images taken by Curiosity.

"Teacher, please focus on these stones, do you see anything they have in common?"

This time with the exact target, Jefferson looked at it quite carefully, and after a while, he withdrew himself from the center console:

"You mean, they're very similar?"

Parker shook his head, his tone becoming agitated:

"No, that's not what I meant. I mean, they're not just similar, these ten stone seeds are just one. After so many years, the same location was actually photographed, which shows that in the past five years, Curiosity may not have moved at all, and it has actually been circling in place on Mars. ”