After Fang Hong finished ordering things, Tian Jiayi went to prepare, not long after she left the living room, Yu Qiu came over with a document, she is now in charge of the Natural Science Foundation.

Yu Qiu came to sit down next to Fang Hong and said: "The Space Administration and the Space Center of the Academy of Sciences took the lead in demonstrating and envisioning a deep space exploration project called 'Nine Days', hoping to seek financial support from the Natural Science Foundation. ”

It is worth mentioning that "Firefly 1" is the first Mars exploration mission in China, and it is a deep space exploration project in cooperation with Da Mao, but unfortunately the first Mars exploration mission ended in failure.

On November 8, 2011, the Firefly-1 departed from the Baikonur launch site on the Da Mao Zenith-2SB rocket, and arrived in the target's low-earth orbit ten minutes later, ready to change orbit to Mars with confidence.

After the first orbit change was successful, Da Mao's rocket had problems during the second orbit change and could not achieve the established orbit change goal.

It was originally planned that the engine on the rover would be ignited at a perigee time of 206 kilometers, and it would continue to change orbit to Mars in the future, but when perigee was ready to accelerate the orbit change, the probe had not successfully changed orbit.

Now the results of the investigation have come out, it is Da Mao's chip error, its anti-radiation ability design is insufficient, the reason for the failure is that the detector's chip was hit by the impact of high-energy particles in the universe and failed, resulting in it being unable to issue the established instructions, just when the system crashed and restarted, resulting in the failure of the implementation of the orbit change instructions, and the domestic Firefly No. 1 was also unlucky.

Finally, at 17:45 on January 15, 2012, the probe crashed into the Pacific Ocean with orbital decay.

In fact, domestic rockets such as Changsanyi are capable of transporting Firefly 1 alone, but due to the constraints that the construction of the domestic deep space exploration network has not yet been completed, and there is no experience in this area, they choose to cooperate with Da Mao's deep space communication system, and therefore choose to take Da Mao's rocket and Fopos Soil Good Detector to Mars together.

As a result, Da Mao's chip error made the first Mars exploration dream in China break through the low earth orbit.

Not even leaving Earth, let alone going to Mars.

The failure of the first Mars exploration mission also cast a shadow on the domestic field of deep space exploration, which directly led to the suspension or shelving of follow-up plans.

Just when everyone was extremely depressed, the Natural Science Foundation was born, which also rekindled the expectations of the domestic deep space exploration team.

The Natural Science Foundation of China, in the eyes of many people in the field of basic scientific research, is full of the three big words "I have money", the space laser gravitational wave detection program "Sky Mirror" started with an astronomical budget of 300 billion yuan, and the survey space telescope project has reached a frantic budget of 100 billion yuan.

With the failure of the "Firefly No. 1", while summing up the lessons and lessons, we are also unwilling to give up deep space exploration, but there is no money for space exploration, so it will definitely not be able to play.

At this time, the most important thing for the Natural Science Fund is money, and the deep space exploration team also found that the Natural Science Fund is particularly fond of the field of space exploration, and especially likes to make it bigger.

If funding can be obtained from the agency, deep space exploration is not only expected to restart, but even bigger than Mars exploration.

Doesn't the Natural Science Foundation like to make it big?

Then make a big one for you, so in the past year, the planetary exploration project plan codenamed "Nine Days" came into being.

The word "Tianwen" originates from Qu Yuan's long poem "Tianwen", which expresses the tenacity and persistence of the Chinese nation in the pursuit of truth, embodies the cultural inheritance of natural and cosmic space exploration, and implies that the journey of exploring scientific truth is long and the pursuit of scientific and technological innovation is endless.

The "Tianwen Series" is based on the "Nine Heavens of Stars" as the graphic logo of the project, and the eight planets of the solar system are arranged in turn, implying the exploration of the major planets of the solar system, that is, not only to explore Mars, but also to have plans for the eight planets.

Doesn't the Natural Science Foundation like to make it big?

That's big enough, right?

But at this moment, Yu Qiu opened the document and lowered his eyes to browse the content and said: "The Nine Days Plan is aimed at the exploration of the major planets in the solar system, and two deep space exploration plans have been proposed, one is the exploration of Mars, and the other is the exploration of Saturn. ”

Hearing this, Fang Hong nodded and said concisely: "Let's hear it." ”

Yu Qiu immediately flipped through a few pages of documents and said slowly: "The goal of the Saturn exploration program is to explore the entire Saturn system, focusing on the exploration of Saturn's moon Titan, according to the plan, it will be launched in 2016, using the gravitational slingshot effect to accelerate the probe, it needs to fly over Venus twice, then over the Earth, and then fly to Jupiter, and finally fly to Saturn, with a total flight distance of more than 3 billion kilometers for nearly eight years, and is expected to be captured by Saturn's gravity in 2024." ”

Saturn, a distant planet in the outer solar system, wants to send a probe to it, just relying on the power and fuel of the rocket itself, with the current level of human technology, it is absolutely impossible to do it, and neither can the United States.

Neither the more distant "Voyager" program nor the "Cassini" program, which is currently on a mission to Saturn, can reach its destination with only the fuel it carries, and the reason why it can send the probe there is because of the "gravitational slingshot" to gain additional acceleration.

The probe is accelerating itself by the gravitational pull of the white planet, so that it can gain faster speed and consume less fuel, so that it is possible to detect the planets of the outer solar system.

If the Saturn exploration plan of the "Nine Days" project is to be carried out, it also needs to use gravity to accelerate itself.

According to the specific scheme of the Saturn exploration plan, the flight route:

After launching from the bottom air, the first flight to the orbit of Venus gained a gravitational acceleration of 3.7 km/s; The second flight to the orbit of Venus obtains a gravitational acceleration of 3.1 km/s; Then it is to go to the Earth again, and when it flies into the Earth's orbit, it has to obtain a gravitational acceleration of 4.1 km/s.

The next flight will be in the orbit of Mars, but the flight path will not meet Mars, because the orbit of Mars during this time window will not meet Mars, so it will not be possible to detect Mars along the way.

Then it passed through the asteroid belt, then visited Jupiter, and finally flew over Jupiter's orbit to gain gravitational acceleration of 2.1 km/s, which took nearly five years, and then the probe went into hibernation for about three years, and flew in the direction of Saturn.

The journey from Earth to Saturn, the final destination, would take nearly eight years.

The exploration of Saturn is the final mission, but in the five years with the help of gravitational slingshot acceleration, to visit the two planets Venus and Jupiter at close range, naturally we cannot give up such a good opportunity, and the limited time window on the way will also carry out preliminary exploration of these two planets, such as flying over Jupiter, I also plan to study Jupiter's magnetosphere by the way.

The Saturn exploration program can be described as ambitious, but it is also extremely arduous.

You must know that the Cassini probe, which is still on mission to Saturn, has 17 countries participating in the program, and it is also one of the largest international cooperation projects since mankind entered the space age.

If you want to carry out the exploration plan of the Saturn system in China, you can only play by yourself, and people in Europe and the United States will definitely not take you to play, and the International Space Station, satellite navigation system, etc. will reject you.

Therefore, if China wants to carry out space exploration projects, it can really only rely on itself, but since the failure of the "Firefly No. 1" project with Da Mao last year, I don't really want to cooperate with other countries.

I couldn't rely on it, and in the end I found that I was the most reliable.

……

(End of chapter)