Taking the first step is just the beginning of extravehicular activities.

In the ground command center, Lin Ju held a detailed list of the landing mission in his hand.

The next event is the most important flag-planting, where the two astronauts have to take down two more folding electric flagpoles and raise two flags.

Unlike the Apollo program, which just came to "see", the Dawning program really intends to build a normalized manned lunar base, and it is too unfeeling to plant only a small flag.

The folding flagpole carried by Shuguang-3 is an "L" shaped with grooves, consisting of 12 1.8-meter sections, which can be installed into two 10.8-meter flagpoles, and then fixed with thin wire ropes and ground nails, which is quite strong on the moon without wind and rain.

The job took about 30 to 40 minutes to complete, and the two astronauts are now bringing down higher-definition television equipment to send back better-angle footage.

A large part of the blame for the Apollo program in the '70s was due to the terrible quality of the video footage, when the technology was still transcribed on film, which was considered bad at the time, but now it seems to be very bad.

Needless to say, the quality of the live broadcast signal of Dawning-3 is that there are many high-power satellites and space stations that can be forwarded, and the bit rate and resolution are very high, at least no one can blame the authenticity of the picture quality.

Now that the progress of the Aurora III mission has reached 99.8%, it's time to check out the Artemis II team.

Lin Ju approached Yun Hongjun's side, as the chief engineer of the Long Ten, he was very concerned about Artemis II, and now he was watching NACA's YouTube broadcast on the tablet.

"Where are we?"

Yun Hongjun flipped the slab at an angle: "It's about to drop halfway, and it should be 50 to 60 minutes before landing." ”

"Blue Origin has a good technical foundation, and the things that came out in such a hurry can really be used."

Hearing Lin Ju's ridicule, Yun Hongjun shook his head with a smile and said:

"You young people are always easy to think of others too simply, and the accumulation of one or two hundred years of others is really very powerful if you start to be ruthless."

After chatting a few words, Lin Ju sat next to Yun Hongjun, his eyes looking at the busy astronauts for a while, and the tablet for a while.

When Zhang Zhiguang puts up the flagpole, Artemis II will also land, right?

A black man and a woman, it's really uncompromisingly correct, look at the height...... 14.4 km to ......

Lin Ju frowned suddenly, tilted his head and glanced at the UI below the YouTube live broadcast, and now the display below is "Hight: 14,600 m", 14.6 km? Why is it still getting higher?

"Mr. Yun, take a look."

Yun Hongjun, whose attention was still bouncing on Fang Lin, lowered his head, and didn't notice anything wrong for a while, but Lin Ju pointed to the height to show that he didn't react.

This...... The TV station with the ground plus UI went wrong, right? Rising heights?

The current descent rate cannot be used as a reference to determine whether the lander is rising or falling, so Yun Hongjun's first suspicion is that there is a problem with the live broadcast group.

The two decided to look at it first, waited for about a minute, and the altitude figure came to 22.4 kilometers, stopped for about two seconds, and then began to descend again.

But Yun Hongjun keenly noticed that the rate of decline was increasing.

A simple judgment shows that the acceleration of the descent is about 1.5 to 2 m/s^2, and the gravitational acceleration of the moon is 1.62 m/s^2.

Before he could fully confirm the discovery, the live broadcast screen on the tablet suddenly changed to two male and female hosts, who were talking a few words with calm faces, and then the screen changed to a real-time image outside the cabin of the "Portal" space station.

"Did you see that?"

Lin Ju nodded solemnly, from the altitude stopped at 22.4 kilometers and then cut off the screen for almost 5 seconds, he still remembered the last height he saw, using the mobile phone calculator, the acceleration was almost 1.7m/s^2

There is only one possibility for this scenario: the engine of the lander is not working, it is rapidly descending under the gravitational pull of the Moon.

At an altitude of about 20,000 meters, it only takes about 160 seconds if you don't slow down, and it will hit the surface of the moon in about two and a half minutes.

I'm afraid it's not the problem of the live broadcast, but the "Blue Moon" is in big trouble!

Yun Hongjun and Lin Ju hurriedly went to find Academician She, this is really a big deal!

"Out of steam?"

The big guy who was still in a meeting in Huayin was connecting with his superiors waiting for the meeting, and suddenly received a call from Qiongzhou saying that "Blue Moon" had lost momentum during the live broadcast, and the current situation is unknown.

On the other end of the phone, Yun Hongjun, who witnessed the whole process, was reporting:

“…… I think the altitude rise that Kobayashi saw at that time should have been real, and it should have been that there was some malfunction, and the two astronauts wanted to give up the moon landing, so the engines accelerated and tried to enter orbit again, but this effort eventually failed due to the loss of power;

Then the lander is falling at the speed of free fall on the moon before the screen is cut off, and if you don't try to get out again, it will definitely be a crash! ”

"Shhh

If Artemis 2 crashes on the moon, then I'm afraid that Dawn 3 will have to drop another half as soon as the flag is raised, and the letter to the people of the world will have to be changed to a eulogy.

Just when he had a headache, the phone on the other end was snatched by Academician She:

"I have a way, if Artemis II really loses power completely, it will definitely crash in two or three minutes...... It's almost now, there is a seismic monitor on the Dawn 2 lander we launched earlier, and if it hits it at such a fast speed, the instrument must have reacted!

I'm going to have someone call up the data right away! ”

"Okay, I won't hang up the phone, I have to confirm their situation first!"

At the other end, Academician She immediately called the Lunar Unmanned Detector Control Center in Beijing and asked to update the data of the seismic monitor immediately.

He looked at his watch, it had been five minutes since the "Blue Moon" had begun to fall, and if it had really lost power completely, it would have been gone.

Falling from a height of 20,000 meters, even under the gravitational pull of the moon, it can be accelerated to nearly 260 meters per second, which is almost 930 kilometers per hour, which is equivalent to a jet airliner flying at extreme speed.

The control center in the capital was urged online by Academician She, and the result was given two minutes later:

"Report to the commander-in-chief, we have the latest data from 22 seconds ago, the seismic monitor found no anomalies, no anomalous geological activity, no unusual vibrations, and no other anomalies have been recorded in the past 24 hours;

We also retrieved the vibration monitor on the Yutu 3B and found no anomalies. ”

Academician She breathed a sigh of relief and immediately picked up another phone to report the situation to the big guy.

"So the lander didn't crash?"

"It didn't happen in five minutes, it should have been a successful launch, but we don't know if he will continue to land or give up."

"Then follow the original plan, and let the others continue to follow up!"

"Yes!"

(End of chapter)