For the two NASA astronauts trapped in the Aitken Basin at the moon's south pole, their situation has become increasingly precarious as the reserves of oxygen and other resources in the Artemis lunar module continue to decline.

As a 'space power', it is naturally impossible for the United States to watch its astronauts being 'trapped' on the moon like this, NASA and White House have held many meetings in a row to discuss ways to rescue their own astronauts.

For now, NASA and White House have two options in front of them.

The first is to send another BRF rocket and a lunar spacecraft to the moon to send new astronauts to rescue the two trapped people in the Artemis lunar module.

But this method is just too difficult.

First of all, the lunar landing is a considerable amount of work, especially the manned lunar landing, which is extremely demanding for the calculation and preparation of the orbit.

Of course, if that's all there is to it, then there is still a glimmer of possibility.

After all, Space-X has a reserve of BRF heavy rockets that will be able to complete launch activities again.

But the key point is that the oxygen and supplies on the Artemis lunar module may not be able to hold out until their rescue comes.

Because of the deployment of the lunar base, the oxygen materials on the Artemis lunar module of the lunar landing this time were not as sufficient as that of Apollo 11, and some of their oxygen and material reserves were placed in the life support unit.

For astronauts who landed on the moon, as long as they could open the life support unit, they would have access to enough oxygen and supplies, enough for them to stay on the moon for more than a month.

But no one expected that they would not even be able to get out of the lunar module.

This makes it seem unrealistic to relaunch the BRF Heavy rocket to launch a rescue operation.

The second solution is for the Artemis lunar module to ignite and lift off, return to the Orion multipurpose manned spacecraft, and try to see if it can open the lunar module with the help of another astronaut.

However, this approach is still extremely risky.

Because judging from the inspection data fed back by the two astronauts who are currently trapped on the lunar module, this landing mistake damaged not only the landing gear, but also the chain reaction is very likely to damage the engine on the side of the lunar module.

This means that there is a high probability that the Artemis lunar module will not be able to complete its normal flight and orbit, and if there is any deviation, the two astronauts will die.

Faced with this situation, neither NASA nor the White House dared to easily let the lunar module return to lunar orbit and dock with the Orion multipurpose manned spacecraft.

So much so that from the current situation, either option seems unrealistic.

While NASA was debating how to rescue its astronauts, on the other side, it was 380,000 kilometers away on the moon.

After stepping on the lunar surface, Huaguo's two astronauts cooperated with each other to begin lunar exploration work.

Facing the Lanyue lunar landing ship, Chen Dong took off the equipment carried from the lunar module and deployed it in a calm and orderly manner.

Beside him, Liu Yang filmed the overall situation of the Lanyue lunar module through the shooting device on the spacesuit, and transmitted the data back to Earth for the engineers and technicians of the space center to make judgments on the situation after the lunar module landed.

These are the first steps that need to be carried out after landing on the moon, whether it is a ground control center or an astronaut landing on the moon, the most important thing is to ensure that you can return from the moon surface smoothly.

And when all the preliminary preparations were completed, a red flag appeared in front of the camera.

Standing on the surface of the moon, Chen Dong and Liu Yang held the bright flag hand in hand, saluted the camera slowly, and then cooperated with the red flag in their hands to insert it into the lunar soil.

Looking at the red flag on the surface of the moon, at this moment, whether it was the staff of the space center or the audience squatting in front of the TV, computer and mobile phone, they were all excited and tearful.

[Huaguo is awesome! Crazy shout. JPG!】

[The red flag is fluttering in the wind!] The bright moon illuminates the heart! 】

[Shenzhou flies into the sky, Chang'e explores the moon, the sea of stars catches the moon, our journey is the sea of stars! ] 】

[Warm congratulations on the successful manned landing of Xinghai on the moon!] Climb the peak of science, we are on the way! 】

[Chang'e, what about Chang'e? Chang'e is coming out to pick up guests! 】

[I'm looking up, above the moon~]

【？ Why can you voice upstairs? 】

[I don't know how many times I've watched it, but I am particularly moved when I look at national events like a waste. (Dog's Head .jpg)】

Looking at the bright red flag standing above the moon, in the live broadcast room, hundreds of millions of viewers were so excited that they couldn't help themselves

The red flag planted in the soil of the moon not only represents the strength of the country, but also the belief that supports the development of **ism!

They successfully let the astronauts set foot on the moon land, successfully took over the flag from the hands of the big brother of the last century, embarked on a new path, and went further and better!

As the barrage said, the mission of the inheritance continues, and their goal is the sea of stars!

Xiashu Aerospace Base.

When the five-star red flag was planted on the surface of the lunar soil and stretched out, everyone stood up excitedly, and the thunderous applause resounded through the entire command center like a tide.

After catching up with the footsteps of half a century, it has finally completed the transcendence today.

Looking at the picture transmitted back by the shooting device, Xu Chuan had a relieved smile on his face.

After more than a year of busyness, the manned lunar landing, which can be described as an epic project for Huaguo, was finally completed in his hands.

Looking at the red flag that was unfolding without wind, he took a deep breath and exhaled a long time, and his heart that had been hanging a lot was finally relaxed.

The moon landing is complete, and the most important point has passed.

In the next 48 hours, Chen Dong and Liu Yang will unfold some of the basic materials and equipment carried by the 'Lanyue lunar lander'.

Such as passive seismographs, laser ranging mirrors, lunar mineral spectrum analyzers, lunar soil structure detectors and so on.

They will use the equipment to conduct a detailed examination of the lunar surface where they landed, and use the drilling equipment to collect some lunar soil and lunar rocks.

Subsequently, Xinghai, which sails in lunar orbit, will replenish life support units and build some materials on the lunar surface during its periodic orbit around the moon.

In some ways, the symbolism of the first manned landing on the moon is greater than the actual scientific work. But they will not waste this opportunity to do more preparatory work for subsequent lunar development.

Through the powerful carrying capacity of the Xinghai, the Xinghai Research Institute carried some of the materials for the construction of the lunar base.

For example, life support units, intelligent unmanned equipment, and the preparation equipment of 'dry-mix autoclaved lunar soil bricks' to test whether the lunar soil can be condensed into lumps, etc.

Some of these equipment and equipment sound quite 'funny', but they are the crystallization of the wisdom of various scientific research institutions, and they are all prepared for the subsequent construction of the Huaguo Lunar Base.

You must know that to build a lunar base on the moon, especially a large-scale lunar scientific research base, such as the lunar biosphere that Xu Chuan talked to Academician Wu Weihua of Huanong University before.

These construction projects will consume a lot of construction materials, and due to the short-term limitation of the spacecraft's carrying capacity, the cost of indirectly transporting materials from Earth to the surface of the moon will be extremely large.

Therefore, it will be an effective means to directly collect and use lunar soil from the lunar surface for in-situ construction, which is also the mainstream view of the current research on lunar surface construction materials.

The lunar soil itself is also an in-situ building material with important processing value.

It is not only China that has this idea, as early as the last century, after the manned equivalence of the United States, NASA's jet propulsion laboratory has done corresponding experiments.

Experiments show that using lunar soil as the protective layer of lunar buildings can greatly reduce the damage and aging of material properties caused by cyclic stress and radiation caused by the temperature difference between day and night. ’

This also means that it is not impossible to complete the construction of a lunar base by taking materials from the surface of the moon.

However, because of the extreme environment of ultra-vacuum on the lunar surface, low gravity, large temperature difference, lack of water resources, etc., the heat conduction and pressurization processes in the preparation of building materials (such as firing billets and bricks) have a great impact.

Moreover, ensuring the safety of astronauts is also an important task of lunar construction.

Its internal environmental control technologies such as air supply and pressure regulation, gas composition control, temperature and humidity control, ventilation and purification, fire prevention and control, water management, waste management, etc., are also difficult to solve.

How to overcome and resolve these difficulties is something that China needs to ''''''''''''''''' seriously

Of course, these are the issues that need to be considered in the subsequent development of spaceflight, and the core and key at present is still the perfect completion of the first manned landing on the moon.

After all, only when the astronauts are sent up completely and successfully picked up can it be regarded as a successful manned lunar landing operation.

In the general control room, after the two astronauts, Chen Dong and Liu Yang, successfully launched lunar activities, Xu Chuan also breathed a sigh of relief.

The current progress is quite smooth, at least for the next forty-eight hours, whether it is him or the other employees in the space base, they can take turns to take a short rest.

At this moment, Director Wu Yuankang of the Space Administration in the control room walked in quickly and reported: "Academician Xu, there may be some unexpected situations in the Artemis lunar module of NASA. ”

"Accident?"

Xu Chuan looked over in some surprise.

The last time I received news from Wu Yuankang was that NASA said that the Artemis lunar module had successfully separated from the Orion multipurpose manned spacecraft and successfully landed on the lunar surface.

When he received the news, he sighed with some regret and hurried to hurry, this time the moon landing was still preempted by NASA.

However, at that time, he was presiding over his manned lunar landing activities, and he didn't have much time and energy to follow the progress of NASA, so he didn't pay much attention to it after a while.

Wu Yuankang nodded and replied: "The latest information received, NASA's Artemis lunar module had an accident when landing, resulting in damage to the lunar module, the hatch could not be opened normally, and the astronauts were trapped in the lunar module. ”

"Huh?"

Hearing the news, Xu Chuan opened his mouth and was stunned for a moment.

He felt a little incredulous and glanced at Wu Yuankang, and asked in surprise: "The lunar module is damaged?" Astronauts trapped? What's the situation? ”

Wu Yuankang: "It's not clear what the specific reason is for the time being, but the space agency has issued an order to inform the Chang'e-5 orbiter, which is currently in orbit, to use the remaining fuel to make an orbit change and go to the Aitken Basin in Antarctica to see the situation." ”

Speaking of which, some people may wonder, hasn't Chang'e-5 already brought 1.731 kilograms of lunar samples back to Earth? Why is there still an operating Chang'e-5 probe in space?

In fact, this Chang'e-5 is not the Chang'e-5 that landed on the moon.

The Chang'e-5 lunar exploration is a systematic project, and the difficulty of the lunar sample return mission is very high.

In order to achieve this feat, the entire probe is divided into four parts, namely the orbiter, the returner, the ascender and the lander.

After the probe is launched into orbit around the moon, the 'orbital return assembly' composed of the orbiter and the returner separates from the 'upper assembly' composed of the lander and the ascender.

The orbit-back assembly continues to rotate around the moon in orbit, and the upper assembly goes to the moon.

After completing the sampling mission, the lander serves as a temporary launch pad, and the ascender starts the rocket engine, carries the sample away from the moon, and then docks with the orbital return assembly flying in orbit.

Finally, the orbital return assembly flies to Earth with lunar samples, and halfway through, the returner and orbiter are separated, the returner returns home with lunar soil, and the orbiter flies into space, and then changes orbit through the first Lagrange point and a series of space points to return to the moon's large-margin retrograde lunar orbit (DRO orbit).

It was the first spacecraft in human history to enter the DRO orbit, and it flew there for about a year and a half, carrying out various scientific research activities.

Originally, in the space agency's planning, the Chang'e-5 orbiter would change orbit again in August this year, that is, two months to carry out other missions.

But now, in order to confirm the reality of NASA's Artemis moon landing, the space agency has changed the instructions after communicating with the above, allowing the orbiter, which has little fuel left, to explore the situation in the Aitken Basin.

Although there are some suspicions of 'joining' the fun, NASA's moon landing really had an unexpected situation, and the 'first' of the first woman to land on the moon is theirs.

Cough. That's a bit of a problem

It should be that they are happy to help others and go to see if the Artemis lunar module needs help.

After all, the moon is nearly 400,000 kilometers away, and if there is really an accident on the moon, the only one that can help them now is Xinghai.

Waiting for the United States to save itself? The two astronauts on the Artemis lunar module are estimated to be

Hearing the news, Xu Chuan, who was already quite sleepy and planned to go to sleep, suddenly came to his senses.

He quickly asked, "You mean, although NASA successfully launched the lunar module on the surface of the moon, the lunar module malfunctioned, resulting in the two astronauts who landed on the moon have not been able to set foot on the moon so far?" ”

"If that's the case, then we might be ahead of the moon landing?"

Wu Yuankang nodded and said: "The accuracy of the news is very high, I have real-time attention to the lunar landing on the NASA side, and up to now, after the successful separation of the lunar module, NASA has not updated their lunar landing progress." ”

Speaking of this, Wu Yuankang also had a smile on his face.

originally thought that the other party landed on the moon ahead of schedule, and they had missed these firsts, but they didn't expect that the other party's moon landing at this critical node actually had an accident.

Although he is also an astronaut, he will not and cannot laugh at the other party, but this 'leak' is indeed open-minded, as if there is a providence in the dark.

And more critically, if there is really a problem with the Artemis lunar module, it is impossible for the United States to watch its astronauts die on the moon if they can save it.

After all, if this kind of thing is poked out, it will be a major blow to the whole country.

But now the only one who can pick up the two astronauts back is their Xinghai.

If you want them to pick up people, they are also taking a 'risk' and not paying any price, is it possible?

Thinking of this, Wu Yuankang's thoughts were about to drift to the negotiation table.

After all, there is not much time left for the United States and NASA.

Even if the two astronauts could hold on, the oxygen and supplies carried by the Artemis lunar module would not last many days.

(End of chapter)