The landing site of the Chang'e-4 mission is in the crater, which is scientifically known as the Aitken Basin.

The reason why I chose this place is to follow the previous analysis of this Antarctic region by scientists from various countries, and believe that its mineral deposits and ice content are extremely rich, and the available ice alone may weigh 270 billion tons, enough to make countless fuels.

If a base for fuel production can be built here, it could even provide fuel and supplies for Martian spacecraft.

Launching the same weight of fuel from Earth and from the surface of the moon is much easier than launching from lunar orbit to low Earth orbit, and one-sixth of gravity can save too many resources.

The outside world only knows that Explorer-1 can jump and travel, but they don't know anything about the specific data and what kind of detection equipment it carries, let alone what Explorer-1 is going to do.

In NACA's view, the unknown represents fear, and from time to time they take photos and analyze them as their lunar orbiting satellite flies to the south pole, but unfortunately the two rovers are too small to even see the lander, which can only be said to be worthless.

However, in the B-level base, Lin Ju and the engineers of the explorer project team controlled the big spider to sample and analyze.

Since the distance between the Earth and the Moon is already close to 400,000 kilometers, even light has to travel for 1.3 seconds to reach, which means that the ground control is not real-time.

The signal transmission is 2.6 seconds back and forth, plus the relay forwarding, the time is longer, which is also the reason why the Yutu 2 is dumbfounded, because once the operation is too hasty, it is likely to cause accidents such as traps.

However, this problem does not exist for the explorer, it is equipped with a castrated version of the SC09 control system, there are only two chips, and it is a low-power version that restricts a lot of functions, but it is still enough.

On the moon, there is no need for extremely complex image recognition and processing capabilities, anyway, there is no sudden passing by a grocery cart that does not obey the traffic rules, there is no strong wind blowing stones, the only accidents are earthquakes and meteorites.

So many times the way of ground control is actually to give the explorer a task, for example: drill a hole at a depth of 3 meters at a certain location, and perform spectral analysis on the collected samples.

Then there is nothing to do on the ground, and the explorers themselves analyze the route that is both safe and energy-efficient, and jump over it one by one.

In this way, there is no need to worry about the risk of delays, and the AI will avoid obstacles on its own anyway.

The explorer's luck was actually not good, when he first went, he only met the tail of the moon, and after more than 900 meters of activity, he had to sleep, and waited for 14 days before waking up again, which would be the time for passionate work.

However, the explorer's luck was not very good, before the departure of the Xinyuan engineers read too many expert reports from various countries, saying that it was as if the south pole of the moon was full of ice, and there were ice lumps after a few steps, but the explorer's photoelectric detector swept countless circles, at least on the surface of the Aitken Basin, there was no sign of the existence of water resources.

In front of Lin Ju, the explorer completed the 19th drilling mission, drilled down a distance of 3.4 meters with the folding drill rod on the robotic arm, and then pulled it up and used its own equipment for careful analysis:

Not a single ice crystal.

At this time, the explorer had run 1,300 meters away from the lander, and he found some resources as he walked.

In addition to a large amount of alumina, silicon oxide and silicate, there are ilmenite, which is very rich in lunar soil, and there are also a lot of other copper ores, rare metals rhenium and antimony, although the content is very low, but if it is mined on a large scale, it is still much easier to obtain than on the earth.

But smelting ore on the moon and transporting it to Earth...... It may take a long time for it to work, and even if it does, it won't be necessary.

Transporting so many dead things to low-earth orbit and then wrapping them in a protective layer and throwing them down is not as troublesome as opening a factory on the moon to engage in industry.

The immediate priority is to find water, without which it is impossible for the lunar base to operate for a long time.

Fortunately, there is still a long time left for them, enough to throw Explorers 2, 3, and 4 up and look for them slowly, and they will always find it.

"Boss, it's normal for Explorer 1 to be found, the Aitken Basin has an area of 4.9 million square kilometers, with a diameter of 2,500 kilometers, if you really want to find it, either by luck, or on a large professional prospecting vehicle, it is ten times larger than the explorer, and the drilling depth is best to reach 15 to 20 meters to have a greater chance of finding ice."

Chen Xuan, the chief engineer of the Explorer Project, explained to Lin Ju that although this would not affect Lin Ju's speed of making money, it was best to let the boss understand.

Lin Ju thought about it, and more than half of the 400-kilogram small detector was a battery, so it was indeed a little difficult to give it too important a task.

Chen Xuan continued: "The next mission of Explorer-1 is mainly to find a suitable lunar surface base and landing site while exploring before the arrival of follow-up probes, maybe we can launch another Explorer-2 alone at the end of the year, and then carry out large-scale exploration operations when Chang'e-5 is in place with a nuclear vehicle next year." ”

Lin Ju: "Then the explorer will let it move freely next?" ”

"Free activity" refers to the built-in function of Explorer-1, which gives a concentrated exploration task in a certain area, and then the explorer determines the detection location by himself through the power of electricity and the distance from the lander, and freely carries out the exploration work.

If there is a moonlit night, just rush back to the lander before this and charge the lander's battery, so that you can rely on the lander's solar panels to store electricity to maintain a small amount of activity on a moonlit night.

Unlike Yutu-2, if Yutu-2 is in the moonlit night for a long time, most of the subsystems will go dormant due to lack of power, and it is likely to "pass out", although the core components are insulated by RTG (isotope batteries), but if the temperature of other components is too low, it may not start.

After passing out, you can only resign yourself to fate, most of the time if you are lucky, you can slowly charge and activate it through solar cells, and if you are unlucky, you will lose contact permanently.

Explorers are much better, and the "fainting" state does not occur unless the battery is too low before sleeping.

Chen Xuan heard Lin Ju's question and just wanted to answer it, when the phone in the control room rang.

"Hello? …… Ah, the explorer is indeed there, well, good, good. ”

The call was not long, Lin Ju knew that this was the communication route connecting the control center of Yutu No. 2 in the capital, and asked curiously:

"What happened? What happened to Jade Rabbit 2? ”

Chen Xuan sighed first, and then said quietly:

"The space agency said they found that the solar panels of Yutu-2 may be dirty, and the power generation efficiency has been reduced by 3%, maybe there was too much moon dust just now, and asked if we could take the time to help wipe it off."

Lin Ju is full of black lines, and the space agency is using explorers as space cleaners.

Don't ask why the moon has no wind to cover the lunar dust with such high solar panels, the lunar dust on the surface of the moon is subjected to cosmic rays and the sun's high-energy radiation electrons, and the dust is electrostatically charged, and it is easy to be adsorbed to the spacecraft.

With the increasing amount of adsorbed moon dust, the mechanical structure is stuck, the sealing mechanism fails, the sensitivity of the optical system decreases, the components wear out, and the thermal control system failure will increase the probability of occurrence with the passage of time, among which the solar panels have the greatest impact.

As long as it is covered with a thin layer of moon dust, the power generation efficiency will be greatly reduced, which is why the space agency attaches so much importance to the robotic arm of the explorer......

For the sake of coming from the same earth, Chen Xuan planned a new scientific research route according to the power of Explorer 2, planning to spend 72 hours while expediting and rushing, and then rubbing Yutu 2 to recharge before the moonlit night arrived.

Tired~

(End of chapter)