Deng Lei, who was in immersion mode, kept pinching his watch, and when he could already see the Pacific Ocean, he focused on looking for anomalies in the vast sea.

However, he also knew that it was useless, not to mention that the Eastern Hemisphere was now facing the sun, and even if he had his back to the sun, it was unlikely that he would see the light of a small rocket.

Only the ultra-large area CCD of infrared remote sensing satellites can accurately grasp the target in the first time, especially the agricultural yield estimation satellite.

In fact, the difficulty of agricultural yield estimation satellites is much higher than that of anti-missile monitoring satellites, and although they are all infrared remote sensing satellites, the accuracy requirements for agricultural yield estimation are simply perverted.

When crops are infestation, or suffer from flooding, the ears of rice are not so plump or drooping, the temperature will fluctuate slightly from space at a few tenths of a degree Celsius, and the agricultural yield estimation satellite needs to cross a distance of hundreds of kilometers to eliminate countless interferences to accurately judge the condition of the crop through this extremely weak infrared radiation change, on the contrary, the flame when the missile is launched is like a torch burning in the dark, and it is extremely difficult for people not to notice.

Why don't we say that the development of modern agriculture is important......

Deng Lei's eyes are of course not infrared CCD, he started looking for it at 10:50, and after 15 minutes, he couldn't find anything abnormal, and once wondered if the headset was malfunctioning.

Just as he was about to turn off the immersive mode, a tiny but dazzling white spot suddenly appeared on the slow-moving blue earth.

The light flare is generated from the edge of Honshu Island and occupies about one-tenth of the entire island in an instant, like a hole in the color projection screen, emitting a bright white light.

But this only lasted for a dozen seconds, and the white light quickly turned yellow and the brightness dropped sharply, replaced by a cyclone that gradually expanded outward, and Deng Lei knew that it was the shape of a mushroom cloud.

The growing mushroom cloud was much more spectacular than the light of the explosion, covering almost the entire northwestern part of Honshu Island, and he could imagine how shocking it must have looked on the ground.

His gaze remained at the point of the explosion until the Dawn 1 spacecraft, which had entered the mid-to-late stage of acceleration, could not be seen in the Southern Hemisphere.

……

Florida.

"Nope! I don't want to see this kind of thing again! ”

Victor sat in the command module of Artemis III and began to complain directly on the radio.

It's 9 a.m. Central Time on the 20th, eleven hours ago, when the nuclear bomb exploded, NACA saw a spacecraft leave the Tiangong space station and fly to the moon.

The Dawn One's operation was not announced until half an hour before its departure, and NACA realized that they had sent an advance team in advance.

So Artemis III and they will arrive on the moon on the same day?

Not to mention how John became a master of desktop cleaning, Robert, although he did not plan to launch in advance, also asked Victor to "not waste time doing unnecessary things".

This feeling of being forced into competition immediately brought back not a good memory of Victor, for whom it had become a PTSD.

"Victor, this is our obligation, and NACA will not reduce any pre-landing procedures this time, so there is no need to worry about accidents."

Deputy Chief Jim tries to comfort him, but Robert is silent and expressionless.

He had already decided that his Hua counterparts were deliberately targeting him, otherwise they were also in a hurry to go to the moon for Christmas Eve!

Maybe those colleagues laughed and named the flight Operation "Santa Claus", then changed the code name of Dawn 1 to "Elk" and deliberately went to the moon early to deliver Christmas presents to Artemis III?

But the entire NACA community will not accept another adventure, and the near-loss in July has made the entire Aramco space community more serious and cautious about manned flights than ever before, and it is estimated that it will take four or five years to barely forget the gloom of Artemis II.

Robert could only hope that Victor and the others had better luck, even if it was a minute earlier.

“ten、nine……”

The countdown sounded again from the launch pad where the SLS was launched 5 months ago, and a large amount of white fog began to emerge from the tail of the SLX rocket.

As a giant rocket with the second largest number of engines and the third largest thrust in the world, the technical status of the first stage originally prepared for Starship has been fully matured, and its reliability as a disposable rocket has been qualified.

Thirty-three liquid oxygen methane engines started in an orderly manner, propelling the Artemis III crew on their second journey to the moon.

On the journey to the moon, there were again two teams traveling together.

……

The success of Artemis III has made Robert a little more relaxed, and in his opinion the darkest page of NACA has been turned and everything is on track.

He didn't stay in Houston for long, and returned to headquarters in the evening, where more things awaited him.

First of all, it is the lunar program, which also includes the lunar blasting program, I don't know if it is a nuclear bomb addiction, the hexagonal revealed that United Mining may conduct a lunar nuclear test as early as March.

Compared with the three "little things" on Earth, the "engineering blasting devices" of the lunar program are the heavyweights.

The third air-burst hydrogen bomb exploded yesterday with a yield of 1.32 million tons, which happened to be stuck on the red line calibrated by the IAEA.

Even if the height of the explosion was deliberately lowered, it is said that standing on a tall building in Tokyo could still see the flash of a nuclear explosion, paralyzing the unprotected civilian communications and power facilities in the entire control area, and causing permanent damage of at least 2 trillion yen, according to the media.

And what about the moon? 1.5 million tons of equivalent is just an appetizer, and there are even crazy plans for 100 million tons of equivalent, and Robert is very suspicious that the explosion will affect spacecraft in Earth orbit.

This plan alone is a headache for Robert, not to mention the upcoming construction of a lunar base and the Mars exploration plan in the first half of next year.

Just after processing the piled up of papers, Boris from the Mars exploration team came to the door again.

It is no secret that the Aviation Development Commission's intensive Mars exploration program is not a secret, and NACA naturally grits its teeth to follow up, but the specific process is still responsible for Boris, who is extremely familiar with Mars.

Robert simply glanced at his plan and thought it was no big deal, but saw Boris close the door with a look of intent and stopping.

"What happened to Boris? If the funds are not enough, we can add more. ”

Boris hesitated for a long time and said something that he completely unexpected:

"Director, our Mars satellite has intercepted an unknown signal that does not belong to any Mars rover known to us, judging by the format, and cannot be decrypted.

While it looks a lot like it was emitted by a naturally occurring star, we judge that there is a 90% chance that it was modulated by intelligent life, and I suspect that the emitter is near Mars. ”

(End of chapter)

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