"Old Xiao, hey, the probe will be launched soon, why are you so unenergetic."

Xiao Okada's distracted appearance was seen by Shen Zuozhou, and he came over to ask with concern.

Shen Zuozhou is a space technology expert of the Fifth Academy of Sciences, and has carried out the first batch of space training, mainly in the field of deep space exploration.

After Xinyuan's Venus plan was launched in a hurry, he hurriedly rushed to the base with his men and horses, and took the space agency's money to stuff equipment into the "Taibai" and "Qixing-1".

It came quickly, and the work was fast, and there was no way that mid-April was the latest time to launch the probe, or else the launch window would be missed.

"Taibai" is a satellite probe orbiting Venus that orbits and can constantly adjust its orbit with Hall thrusters for easy observation; Daystar-1 is a probe that enters the atmosphere of Venus and can even return samples, not from the ground, of course.

The design of the Daystar 1 was relatively hasty but not compromised, with a total weight of 4.8 tons.

It is divided into two parts: the fly-by-pass sample return and the landing part.

The flyer weighs 1 ton of mass, and it will separate when the entire Qixing-1 enters the atmosphere of Venus in a deceleration mode, and "rubs" on the outer atmosphere of Venus for a very short time, loading about 0.01 cubic meters of compressed gas samples, and then starting a one-time solid engine to break away from the gravity of Venus and enter orbit, at this time its mass is only about 300 kilograms.

Then, the solar panels on the fuselage are used to power the small Hall thrusters, which continue to accelerate for about 60 hours, leaving Venus and approaching the Sun, accelerating with the gravitational pull of the Sun, and throwing themselves back to Earth in a large circle.

This process will take about 8 months, in order to reach this high speed it will be extremely close to the sun, the functional part will be almost destroyed by the active corona and high-energy rays on the surface of the sun, leaving only less than 10 kilograms of return capsule unharmed, it will be accelerated by the sun with the 0.01 cubic meters of gas to a very high speed, directly along the predetermined orbit all the way into the earth's atmosphere.

The only way for Xinyuan to capture this return capsule is a layer of special alloy on the surface of the return capsule, which can amplify and reflect radio waves in special frequency bands dozens of times, as long as the possible route is continuously detected by the satellite at a predetermined time, there is a high probability that the return capsule can be found, so that it can confirm the landing point when it returns.

There is no way, it is very difficult for such a small thing to fly back from Venus around the sun to ensure that it will fall on Earth, and it is really impossible to determine exactly where it will fall.

And even after entering the atmosphere, it is not easy to judge, because this 10-kilogram little thing is very easily blown away by the wind after releasing the parachute......

But even if it was possible to land on the lawn of the White House, Xinyuan decided to launch it, a sample of a terrestrial planet — even if it was just a little gas.

The remaining 3.8-ton lander is a complete gamble of luck, as Venus's atmosphere is so thick that the pressure gradually rises from top to bottom, reaching the surface almost 90 times that of Earth.

The surface is made up of volcanoes and flowing magma, and to a lesser extent deserts and wilderness, filled with dangerous chemicals such as sulphuric acid, and can reach maximum temperatures of over 400 degrees Celsius.

The former Soyuz's Venera-8 took 50 minutes to pass through the 250-kilometer atmosphere, and only 11 seconds after landing sent back a signal before it "died".

The biggest goal of Daystar 1 is to land on flat ground and drill the ground as fast as possible, by the way, using a layer of protective microscope to quickly take a picture back to analyze the presence of organic matter and microorganisms, the whole process is expected to take no more than 15 seconds, that is, at least 15 seconds after landing......

Of course, if you are lucky enough to survive a little longer, Daystar 1 will faithfully record and send back the atmospheric composition and natural phenomena collected during the descent process.

Although he was full of pessimism about the Qixing-1 mission, Shen Zuozhou was still very excited, because this was not only Huaguo's first Venus exploration, but also the first Venus sampling and return mission, and the significance was absolutely remarkable.

The two probes are now in the final test of Venus, Qixing-1 was launched with a Xinyuan-5B with a three-stage installation, and "Taibai" was launched with Lightning, and then docked with a 7-ton heavy-propulsion rocket launched by Xinyuan-5 with a light-pole type launched to Venus, and rushed to the destination one after the other, and is expected to arrive at Venus in mid-July.

Xiao Okada, as the designer of the two detectors, was actually distracted, which made Shen Zuozhou a little dissatisfied with the attention they received.

"Zuo Zhou, do you know the space cooperation between the island country and us?"

"Huh?" Shen Zuozhou didn't know why he asked, but he still replied:

"Yes, there is another instrument on Tiangong-2 that was made by the University of Tokyo, what's wrong?"

Xiao Okada: "I wonder if one day the astronauts of the island nation will also go into space on this land. ”

“……”

"If that's going to happen, I'm afraid it's going to have to be similar to ASEAN."

"ASEAN?"

"Yes, you probably don't pay much attention to that."

The ASEAN mentioned by Shen Zuozhou is an organization formed by a group of populous but industrially backward regions in the southeast, which basically covers several important countries.

Their international presence is usually not high, mainly because of their weak strength, but this does not mean that they are willing to live in the third world.

ASEAN members are quite active in aerospace, and most of the foreign commercial satellite launch orders undertaken by China come from them, and most of them are mainly communication satellites and agricultural and meteorological satellites.

After the start of the second space race, ASEAN watched the Dawning plan and the Artemis plan confront each other, and also saw the ambition of the European Selene plan, and it couldn't help but be a little hot, but after touching the wallet, it immediately calmed down.

Maozi has technology but no money, and the Asian stars of India and island countries are not skilled but have enough money, they have neither technology nor money, and they can't afford to play at all, and the moon can't be hopeful.

But low-earth orbit can be touched.

A few days ago, the space center of the Annan Academy of Science and Technology approached the Aviation Development Commission, hoping to rent a Progress or Unity to send 2 or 3 Annan astronauts into space and carry out out-of-cabin activities.

The 70-year-old Pham Zun, who is still in good health and now director of the National Defense Science and Technology Bureau in Annan, was the first Asian astronaut to go into space on a rocket from the former Union.

He bluntly said that Annan was willing to pool a sum of money to send a few more astronauts into space, and hoped that more cooperation could be carried out.

This matter has a big impact, it is easy for foreigners to take the space shuttle or spaceship to the sky, just buy a ticket, as long as they don't break the law, there will be no problems, but that's a tourist, and Fan Zun represents the Annan Space Center (they didn't set up a space agency).

When it comes to the official end, then the talk goes beyond the scope of astronautics.

(End of chapter)