On December 10, the Aviation Development Commission officially determined the Tianwen series of exploration missions in 2018:

The first is the launch vehicle, which is tentatively set as Xinyuan-2B (three-stage configuration), with a Martian orbital capacity of 10.4 tons.

A total of four Mars ground probes are planned to be launched, namely the Tianwen-1 to Tianwen-4 missions, all with the same functions.

The Tianwen-1-4 mission probe consists of a lander and a thruster, the latter of which is responsible for slowing down the 6.5-ton lander into the Martian atmosphere.

The lander is divided into three parts: a heat shield, a roving robot, and a reducer.

The reducer is wrapped in the heat shield above the patrol robot, and when entering the atmosphere, the parachute will be used for preliminary braking, and the heat shield will be thrown off after passing through the atmosphere, and then the rocket will be used to push and decelerate, and the patrol robot will be lowered with a rope cable suspended at a distance of 4~5 meters from the ground, and then it will fly away and crash.

Compared to the lander mode on the moon, the purpose of this is to maximize the mass of the roving robot and enhance the detection capability.

The roving robot will have a traditional wheeled design, tentatively named the Firefly, but with a mass of up to 2.3 tons.

It will be equipped with a 650kg, 5.2KW high-power nuclear battery provided by Xinyuan, which can meet all the needs of the Firefly Mars rover.

In addition to carrying 16 kinds of analysis equipment, the Firefly will also be equipped with a multi-functional robotic arm, which will be controlled by AI on Mars with its own abundant power to explore an area with a radius of about 200 kilometers in two years.

Four rovers, corresponding to four suspected water sites, as long as one place can be confirmed for synthetic fuel.

The Firefly rover is the absolute main force in the selection of Mars landing sites, and the core of it is a 5KW ultra-high-power nuclear battery.

The Aviation Development Commission still has more trust in Xinyuan's nuclear technology, because the 50-kilogram 280w RTG nuclear battery equipped with the Lunar Surface Spider II: Explorer 2, which was launched this month, has been delivered and has reached the design goal.

The nuclear battery of the Mars rover is basically to increase the battery pack, and Mars has an atmosphere that can dissipate heat and is much more comfortable than on the moon, and 5.2KW power is not difficult.

The first nuclear-powered rover Curiosity weighed 900 kilograms and carried a nuclear battery of 45 kilograms and 140w, which is far less powerful than the Firefly.

However, Curiosity's exploration mission does not include frantically searching for water to prepare for a manned landing, so the 140W nuclear battery is also sufficient, so it is not a lack of technology.

In addition, a total of 4 resource exploration satellites in the Mars orbit are ready to be launched, each weighing about 2 tons, which will be launched by two Long March-7A, which is enough to cooperate with the completion of resource exploration tasks.

Of course, this is only the Tianwen plan, and Xinyuan is only an important contractor in it.

For Lin Ju himself, although the Advance is enough to complete the landing mission, due to the uncertainty of the system, the Mars mission may be more complicated than he imagined.

The lunar surface synthetic fuel in the lunar program, the operation of a repeatable unmanned spacecraft to send fuel to the space station around the moon, and the operation of supplying the spacecraft will also be moved to Mars.

And because of the higher gravity of Mars and the obstruction of the atmosphere, it is inevitable that the mass of the entire fuel supply system will double, and Mars is too far away to wait for the window period, so we must seize the opportunity to throw as much mass as possible every time.

In this way, the No. 4 rocket is necessary, with a Martian capacity of 200 tons, which is four times that of the No. 3 rocket.

Moreover, the configuration of the No. 4 rocket has also been slightly adjusted by Seryov, and 39 hydrogen-oxygen engines will be placed in parallel at the core stage at the same time, and the solid thrusters can be reused for sea splash recovery.

The combustion chamber of the hydrogen-oxygen engine used in the No. 4 rocket will be pressurized by more than 30%, and the sea-level thrust will increase to 280 tons while the volume remains the same, making the core stage thrust alone more than 10,000 tons.

Seryov was very fond of the rocket-4, mainly because the hydro-oxygen fuel was very clean, and the solid thruster was ignored by him.

The No. 4 rocket is now set to be in three configurations: basic, A, and B.

The 39 engines of the core stage can flexibly adjust the number of jobs to work for 600 seconds, sending the load all the way into 300 kilometers of low-earth orbit with a capacity of 550 tons.

Type A is a second-class configuration, that is, if it is used to hit a low orbit, it will have 800 tons, but its purpose is for the moon, and it can send a payload of 360 tons to the lunar orbit.

Type B is a three-stage configuration designed specifically for Mars, and it is also the configuration that Seryov values the most, with a capacity of 200 tons, but the point is that the three-stage configuration using liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen fuel will go to Mars with the load and complete the deceleration and braking process.

It will take 4 to 6 months to get to Mars sooner, and the storage of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen fuel in space is a big problem.

Liquid hydrogen needs to be stored in an ultra-high pressure and ultra-low temperature environment, and it will continue to corrode the inner wall of the metal to lead to catalysis, and it is very easy to leak when stored for a long time, and there have been many examples in the history of aerospace.

Generally speaking, for this kind of large spacecraft to travel in deep space, it is advisable for the thruster to use storage-resistant fuel at room temperature, which can be stored for a long time, and it is not a problem for several years.

But this fuel ...... It's highly poisonous, barely over 200 seconds before it is halfway through.

So Seryov decisively ruled out and decided to use zero-evaporation storage technology on the three-stage fuel tank of the No. 4 rocket.

The existing liquid hydrogen storage methods must be deflated regularly to control the high pressure of liquid hydrogen volatilization inside the storage tank, while the purpose of zero evaporation storage technology is to store liquid hydrogen for a long time without leaking out at all.

Both the coalition and NACA have done research in this area, but it has been terminated without much success, but Seryov intends to solve the problem in about a year.

If nothing else, just for high specific impulse and clean fuel, long live environmentalism!

And the specific charter of Xinyuan's Mars program is still slowly being planned in Seryov's mind, so Anderov doesn't know that he will continue to work on this kind of big rocket in the next two years, he actually thinks that the No. 3 rocket is enough to use in the entire era of chemical energy.

……

“Detach！”

Fifty seconds after takeoff of the Artemis 1 mission, at an altitude of about 160 kilometers, the upper stage separated from the core stage with the spacecraft.

The antique-level RL-10 engine starts, and it will continue to accelerate, sending the Orion spacecraft to the moon in 48 hours.

The characteristics of the data transmitted back were perfect, and Claire's heart that had been hanging was finally put down.

The Orion spacecraft is very mature and hardly needs to be tested, only the SLS rocket has always been worrying, fortunately everything is normal in 500 seconds of flight, and the wreckage of the booster has fallen into the ocean, which shows that the design is still successful, and the money of more than 5 billion dollars for the first rocket has not been spent in vain.

"Thank God, it seems that Blackie can be a little happier when he leaves, although he canceled the Constellation Project, but the restart of Artemis is inseparable from his support."

Claire quietly soothed her beating heart, thinking that she was still doing a good job, and if there were still three SLS and a Falcon Heavy rocket to land on the moon, it would be implemented in March 2018.

Even without the Heavy Falcon, the two-engine SLS would have been able to complete the moon landing by August 2018, which was originally guaranteed.

(End of chapter)