The failure of the SRB was a blow to the Orbital ATK company responsible for manufacturing it a few hours after the launch, and Boeing, which was in charge of quality inspection, did not escape and was severely scolded.

The preliminary test report made everyone sweat coldly, and it was hard to imagine how serious the consequences of the mid-air explosion were.

It can be said that if Claire hadn't taken the opportunity to forcibly separate the booster in advance at the risk of a failed launch into orbit, Artemis II would have become a tragedy in front of the world.

But the problem doesn't stop there.

The Blue Moon lander is awaiting overhaul.

On June 28, the Blue Moon docked with the refueling module in lunar orbit and successfully transferred about 18 tons of fuel to the Blue Moon in six hours, bringing the latter's overall mass to 40 tons, which was enough to meet the needs of the mission.

In the early morning of June 30, the "Blue Moon" successfully docked with the HALO module of the "Portal" space station, and it seemed to be very smooth.

More than an hour after the launch of Artemis II at 23 p.m. (Central Time) on the evening of June 30, the team in charge of monitoring the status of the "Portal" sent the report directly to Claire.

The problem is strange, the "Portal" notices an offset in attitude every five hours, and then initiates an RCS correction, which has already appeared many times from the evening of June 28 to the present.

The first two times the ground team didn't pay much attention, but after the third time, they began to conduct a careful accident investigation, first checking for sensor errors, and then discovering that the attitude and orbit were indeed shifting regularly.

Then, after real-time detection, it was found that it was not offset every five hours, but that the space station had been continuously shifting, and it was only after five hours of continuous slight deviation that the trigger condition for corrective instructions was reached.

The Hall thruster of the PPE module is not working, so where does that power appear? The team quickly set their sights on the docking "Blue Moon".

However, after a pass, the attitude engine of the "Blue Moon" did not work all over the body, but according to the direction of the offset, it should indeed be that there is a problem here.

They immediately called in Blue Origin's development team, took the blueprints and simulation software and began a detailed analysis, and finally locked the offset thrust source at a location in the middle of the cylindrical lander.

Looking at the drawings, there is a line for storing the liquid oxygen tank used by the astronauts to breathe inside the lander.

Although the sensors inside the lander did not emit any abnormal signals, it was almost certain that the pipeline was leaking, but it is not known why the relevant pressure vessel sensors did not find any abnormalities.

Regardless, the liquid oxygen leak is certainly a fact, and it has been calculated that an entire tank of liquid oxygen will be leaked before the Artemis II crew arrives - the Blue Moon has four such liquid oxygen tanks for breathing, two of which are backups.

Therefore, the Artemis 2 crew must also carry out a maintenance activity on the lander after arriving at the space station, and the fuel consumed by the "Portal" to adjust the orbit is a trivial matter, at least it will be enough for this mission.

But if it is determined that the lander is unserviceable or too risky, they will have to abandon the mission to the moon.

Now, four Artemis 2 astronauts are urgently reading the lander's emergency maintenance manual and planning possible repairs, and the ground team is on the go.

The astronauts didn't know that they were almost burned to the ground by the rocket, and the ground chose to block the news after the SRB wreckage was investigated, they only knew that the booster was separated early due to the abnormal sensor, and they didn't know that they had already walked on the edge of life and death.

To this day, they are still faithfully working hard to get the job done.

……

"How far is Artemis II from us, you say?"

"At least 10,000 kilometers, right? And I don't know which direction, the universe is three-dimensional, not a plane like the ocean. ”

Unlike the tense atmosphere on Artemis 2, the three astronauts on Aurora 3 are now relaxed.

Fang Lin had taken a perfect picture of the round globe at a perfect angle, and was arranging his time as planned.

Thanks to the results of many expeditions of the explorer robot and the Tianmu-1 operation around the moon, the ground's understanding of the landing site has been quite in place, and it has been entered into the lander computer, as long as the system does not have problems, it can respond to almost any changes.

An unexpected advantage of the detached lander has to be reflected here: if there is an accidental ascent during the descent, the ascent can directly abandon the landing part and ignite and escape, which is similar to the escape tower when the spacecraft is launched.

It is fueled enough to re-enter orbit at any time and will never hit the lunar surface with an astronaut.

Therefore, the Dawning-3 crew is relatively relaxed, except for the daily routine inspection and familiarization with the landing process, they are free to arrange time for observation missions.

Fang Lin saw Zhang Zhiguang sitting by the porthole and bowed his head, knowing that he was reciting the manuscript again.

"I represent the ......"

After landing, Zhang Zhiguang's first steps and first sentences will be recorded through the camera on the outside of the lander, and then more professional TV broadcasting equipment will be installed to complete the flag planting and live speech to the world.

The manuscript was written collectively by the above, and must be read out without any mistakes or omissions, and each paragraph has a fixed meaning, representing the message that the above wants to express to the outside world with the help of the moon landing.

It's not a lot of words, it's less than 500 words, but it's very significant.

And then there was a very meaningful object that would be placed at the landing site, which was said to have caused quite a heated discussion on it, but in the end it was put up.

However, from Fang Lin's personal opinion, he felt that putting that thing on it was a very correct decision, even if it took up some more load.

"Old Fang, help me see what's going on."

Fang Lin followed the voice to find Ding Jihua, who was holding the laptop in the back half of the command cabin, who took off the VR and gently threw the laptop over.

"Look, why do you keep showing anomalies here? I obviously came by step. ”

Fang Lin saw that it was the analog console of the 'Explorer IV'.

Strictly speaking, Dawning-3 has a crew of 4, and the number of "people" who landed on the moon is 3.

The fourth, which was still fixed to the floor of the lander at this time, was a secret payload that could not be disclosed, its name was "Fourteen", the space agency registration code was 'Explorer IV', and the name on the factory nameplate was "Warrior II-M".

The M-type, the Warrior 2 Moon Special Edition, was included in the payload list of the lunar mission as early as April, but it was advanced from Dawn 4 to Dawn 3.

The reason for the name "14" is also simple: the first 'Explorer IV', the combination of two numbers is "14".

(End of chapter)