On the evening of December 20.

The Lunar Exploration Engineering Office of the Aviation Development Commission once again released news to the public, preliminarily confirming the discovery of a large-scale ice sedimentary zone under the Qom impact crater.

Although it is still unclear and there are only a few blurry pictures, it does prove that there is quite a lot of ice underneath the Qom crater, which is at least enough for early exploration.

This news had a huge impact on the international space community, the most important of which was to greatly increase the interest of countries in the moon.

The presence of water means that organic matter can be synthesized, which means that it is possible to achieve self-sustaining of the stationing points on the surface of the moon, greatly reducing the pressure on the ground.

It also shows that colonizing the moon is possible, and although it is not a small project, it is much easier than that of Mars.

ESA, which was the first to react in the media, immediately announced that the area around the Qom crater is rich in resources, and ESA will immediately launch an early unmanned exploration mission, which is expected to launch a satellite and a lunar rover into lunar orbit within six to eight months, tentatively named the "Pandia" program.

The plan was unanimously approved within ESA at an unprecedented rate, and it also led to a greater emphasis on the Selene plan.

It was followed by NACA.

Claire immediately tried to find a way after receiving the call, and finally found one: Perseverance.

In 2011, NACA sent the first nuclear-powered rover to Mars, weighing more than 900 kilograms, Curiosity, and also carried out a similar follow-up project to Curiosity, which was publicly collected and named "Perseverance" in 2020, and is now simply called "Mars Rover II" internally.

The "Mars Rover 2" weighs slightly more than one ton, and its basic skeleton and structure are the same as those of Curiosity, but the scientific research equipment carried on it is very different, and it has been carried out unhurriedly, and there are no technical difficulties anyway.

Claire's request is to transform the "No. 2 Mars Rover" and launch it to the moon.

So the original later "Perseverance" was directly named "Isis" by him.

Isis, the goddess of life, magic, marriage and fertility in ancient Egyptian mythology, and water is the source of life.

For Isis, which uses the same chassis as Curiosity, it is not very troublesome to work on the moon, small modifications will do.

The lowest temperature of the Moon and Mars is more than 100 degrees below zero, the difference is that the temperature of the Moon is extremely high when it is exposed to direct sunlight, but it is also a small problem to modify the dormancy.

The main thing is that the equipment is replaced and remanufactured, which may take some time.

Rockets are ready-made, and the Cosmic God 5, which can send a rover to Mars, can naturally send Isis to the moon, and there are many medium-sized disposable rockets ULA.

The lander does not need to be overhauled, even if the parachute is canceled, the sky crane is enough in the low gravity of the moon, and there is even a surplus, and there is a matter of changing the procedure.

So Claire set the launch date of Isis around the beginning of March 2017, and two months to rebuild Isis was enough.

But before they could make the announcement, SpecaX reacted first.

Musk first praised a wave of aviation development commissions on Twitter and Weibo, and then said that the first batch of 10 Starlink satellite launches in January would be canceled and sent to the moon by a Falcon 9 rocket after modification.

"Starlink" is still here after all.

……

Class B base.

Seryov looked at the six "Explorer II" assembled in the workshop and scratched his hair.

Compared with the disclosure of the outside world, in the past few days, the Aviation Development Commission has controlled two Yutu-3 to do more detailed exploration, and according to the model of the lunar geology, it is speculated that there should indeed be a super-large ice layer under the south pole of the moon, that is, under the location of the Aitken Basin.

The cause of the formation is unknown, but it may have an area of more than 3,000 square kilometers, with an average depth of about 20 to 50 meters from the surface, and the thickness is not known for the time being, but it is conservatively estimated to be more than 20 meters.

It is likely that the Qom crater is a higher point in this ice formation, having been exposed to the ice when it was formed by an impact many, many years ago, resulting in the crater covering an average depth of less than 25 centimeters of lunar soil, and only a few centimeters at its thinnest point.

The entire estimated conserved ice reserve in the ice region is about 600 million tons, which is an unimaginably huge resource.

At that time, the Aviation Development Commission made a fuss, and planned the Chang'e 6, 7, and 8 missions at one time, preparing to launch the probes at the fastest speed, if not for anything else, just to occupy more land.

Before the astronauts' feet go up to establish a scientific research station, they can only rely on the robot to enclose the land first, and occupy the shallowest and best land first.

Xinyuan Company built a total of 12 of them when it was manufacturing Explorer II, and the remaining 6 have been completed and placed here, ready to be launched.

These 6 have been designated as Chang'e-6 rover, the lander will be completed this month, the 6th mission will be launched in early January, and Xinyuan-2 has it anyway.

The space agency bought two of the six probes, so that there were eight robots in the Qom impact crater, forming a crushing advantage for the whole world.

In Lin Ju's words: "If their detectors dare to enter the land we occupy, they will cut their solar panels!" Dismantled and thrown into the crater. ”

Although it is a joke, it does show that there are a large number of robots in the Aviation Development Commission, and now there are 7 on the monthly table!

However, Seryov knew that both Explorer I and Explorer II were mostly detectives, and after finding a definite ice formation, he was thinking about the next generation of practical machines, machines that could produce water, purify and synthesize the required compounds with considerable efficiency.

First of all, the quality problem, Xinyuan-2B (Level 3) has a lunar orbital capacity of 18 tons, which is a very large number, and can send a maximum of 6 tons of payload to the lunar surface.

6 tons ...... 6 tons is too much for a probe, but it is a small number for construction machinery, especially on the moon, which can not give a high proportion of the load weight to the working equipment.

The simplest method of hydrogen production is electrolysis, which requires about 4.5 kilowatt-hours of electricity to produce 1 cubic meter of hydrogen and 0.5 cubic meters of oxygen, and if a 6-ton machine is used to dry electrolyze water to produce hydrogen and compress it, the weight is almost enough.

According to the commonly used catalyst and proton membrane electrolysis method, 5 cubic meters of hydrogen are produced in one hour, which is 120 cubic meters of hydrogen and 60 cubic meters of oxygen in one day.

120 cubic meters of hydrogen is only 10.788 kilograms, and it is certainly not enough to use it as rocket fuel, but it is completely enough to use synthetic materials to supply a scientific research station.

More importantly, oxygen, 60 cubic meters of oxygen is 60,000 liters, an adult consumes about 550 liters of oxygen a day, which means that an electrolysis equipment can provide 100 adults with a day of oxygen, which is completely sufficient.

Such an electrolysis plant consumes about 20 to 40 kilowatts of power, and the nuclear power vehicle being developed at the Tsingshan base can provide 38 kW of power, which is enough.

You also need a mining machine, maybe a nuclear power truck to provide electricity, and some gas tanks to store hydrogen and oxygen, which can be made larger, preferably buried under the lunar soil, so you also need an excavator?

Seryov roughly calculated, 6 tons is the better quality of these construction machinery and large equipment, almost 6 launch missions are needed, and the cost is at least 2 billion yuan, but it can be pulled up to the Aviation Development Commission and spread out more than 60%, so it doesn't cost anything.

Thinking about it, Seryov wrote the "Draft of the Lunna-1 Pre-Small Development Mission" on the tablet, conceiving the design of the base.

(End of chapter)