June 18, Qiongzhou.

Liu Ming walked on the red carpet with six astronauts and waved to the crowd on both sides.

The Long March 7 rocket is already on standby at the launch station, and on top of it is the new generation of manned spacecraft "Banchao".

Since the launch of "Shenzhou 11" in early 2016, that is, the last Shenzhou spacecraft, the first manned spacecraft in China quietly ended its mission in an undisclosed state, and the space agency rubbed several H1 trips in the follow-up time, and used the Dawning spacecraft at the end of last year.

Since the command module of the Dawning spacecraft can be reused, it is no longer thrown once like "Shenzhou", so it is a bit messy to use the name "XX" again, except for the retaining of the naming convention in the Dawning plan, the naming convention has been changed for regular launches.

At the beginning of the year, the "Dawning-2" command module, which was hit up and dropped again, was decided to be converted into a normalized low-earth orbit round-trip spacecraft with a maximum crew of seven people.

At the same time, the small service module of the low-earth orbit version was replaced, and the overall mass was reduced from 22.6 tons in the deep space version to 14 tons.

There are currently two spacecraft in service, namely "Ban Chao" and "Zhang Qian", the latter of which has been reused twice.

This time, the "Banchao" will replace the seven astronauts of the Tiangong space station for a 12-month mission, during which a Tianzhou-2 cargo mission will send some experimental equipment to carry out scientific experiments.

Compared with the past, the team of astronauts is becoming more and more bold, for example, the 7-person crew of this mission, except for Liu Ming, is all chicks, which is somewhat incredible in the past.

Just counting the number of professional astronauts registered with the space agency, the number of people who have been to space exceeds 75 and is continuing to rise at a very high rate, and even more are non-professional.

Space has become the norm.

Liu Ming is no longer as excited as he was at the beginning, and even misses the time on the ground a little, and more than a year in heaven is actually quite a test for people.

If he is because he has more experience, but the other "fledglings" are also a little absent-minded, just like the media, which is still many but a little less present.

A "grapevine" has spread all over the Internet: Dawn 3 will carry out a mission to the moon, and there will also be a space station around the moon.

The leak source on the Internet is messy, but they know it's true, and a press release is coming out in the evening.

Compared with the 380,000 kilometers distance of the moon, the space station operates at a maximum altitude of only 400 kilometers, and it does not even have an atmosphere.

The conquest of the moon is worthy of being called a cosmonautical voyage.

The number of people who can carry out the moon landing mission in the end of the Dawning mission is limited, and the No. 3 mission is still a 3-person crew, and two people will land on the moon, and I heard that it will be changed to a 4-person crew, 3 people on the moon or 4 people will go down, but the total number of remaining places seems to be only 40 for the time being, which has to remove the quota of astronauts from the three countries of Italy, Hair, and Lu.

Then the team of more than 100 people in the 507 Institute competed for the remaining thirty or so, at least a third of which needed to be reserved for the payload specialists, and the competition was even more fierce.

On the other hand, Xinyuan has not yet been explicitly announced, but everyone knows that they must have a grand moon landing program.

Deng Lei, who missed the mission around the moon while still on the space station, is one of the people who went down this handover mission, and he must be preparing for the moon landing.

Storm can transport at least seven people at a time, almost double the Dawning spacecraft, and at least three astronauts will be sent before stopping, right?

……

In Beijing, in the CCAV studio, the host took a deep breath, saw the director's gesture enter the state, and said with pride while smiling:

"Good evening, audience friends...... Today's main news is...... The Long March 10 Yao-3 rocket was loaded from the port of Jingu today, and the Yuanwang-22 rocket carrier headed for Qiongzhou.

This is the third launch mission of China's Dawning Program, and the Manned Space Office disclosed that the crew of this mission is Zhang Zhiguang, Fang Lin, and Ding Jihua, who will carry out China's first manned lunar exploration mission! ”

In front of television sets across the country, people who had already heard the news from the Internet finally heard the accurate information released by the official release, and immediately fell into joy.

How far can this joy go? You can see it with the naked eye.

It was not yet dark at 7 p.m. in the middle of summer, but fireworks were already rising from all directions and covered the sky, even from the base.

A group of researchers from Laboratory 304 stood happily in the open space, admiring all kinds of fireworks.

Most of them are from urban areas, where fireworks are definitely prohibited, and there must be a large group of chengguan and fire brigades searching everywhere as if they were facing the enemy, and then there is a steady stream of people looking for loopholes to set off fireworks.

And near the base, there is also a "firework", and not far away, a low white cylinder can be seen with the naked eye.

It was a Xinyuan-6A solid rocket, and the base built this small rocket with a single-digit capacity just to expand the solid-fuel technology tree, and rarely undertook launch tasks, but now it is about to launch a "longitude and latitude" near-earth satellite that replenishes the network.

This satellite is very special, it is an alternative in the Jingwei satellite network, using very cutting-edge laser communication technology, and the orbit is special, most of the time can be close to Qianjunbang-2.

After it is launched, the ground and Qianjun Stick 2 communication methods will pass through it, and the laser signal will be transmitted by an almost impossible to decipher signal, further obscuring the latter's tracks.

This plan was proposed by Ye Changsi, who believed that the frequent communication between the laser laboratory and Qianjun Stick No. 2 some time ago was easy to arouse suspicion, and at the same time, it could also verify the laser communication technology.

Therefore, this unsightly small satellite was launched directly with a solid rocket near the base in the name of "convenience", and there were still two launches in stock in the warehouse, and it took less than 24 hours to prepare for the launch.

Just in time, if you choose to launch it at night, it will definitely be the brightest of all fireworks, even if it is a small solid rocket of 100 tons, the tail flame can be compared with a liquid rocket that is an order of magnitude larger, and can illuminate almost half of the sky.

The base's congratulations on the moon landing are limited to this.

Even Semyon knew that there was already a backlog of equipment and materials to be used in the future lunar base in the warehouse, and if it weren't for the "meaningful" moon landing, the base would have been able to send people over a long time ago.

There is no space race to the death, but it is just a difficult mining operation.

Thinking so, a car with a military license plate and two BAIC warriors drove in from the gate of the base and stopped in front of them all the way.

The people on the sedan belonged to the Security Bureau, and they came to interrogate Liu Si, and the purpose of the two military vehicles was also related to him.

A lieutenant colonel and a colonel were followed by three soldiers in training uniforms, and the colonel walked up to Semyon, put his arm around one of the soldiers, and said:

"Director Xie, these three are my confidants and favorite generals, and every unit is rushing to get good soldiers, you have to return them all head and foot, and you can't become fools."

Semyon: "Ah, didn't you say voluntary selection? I don't dare to take it like this. ”

"That's not it, everything is made clear in advance, and the three of them defeated the position that others grabbed in the wheel battle."

Semyon: "......"

(End of chapter)