Tick.

It was already winter, and the air conditioning in the office was comfortable, but a drop of sweat still fell down the sleeve and fell on the floor.

John didn't seem to realize this, and his mind was in a trance.

Suddenly pulled onto the vast stage of the solar system, he was not prepared for anything, and he did not know what to do at all.

Even if it is just a signal that is still uncertain, there is huge pressure from hundreds of millions of kilometers.

Cheyenne Mountain has a plan to deal with all kinds of dangers, and even an asteroid hitting the earth has been considered, but it is true that no one has thought about how to deal with aliens.

Because anyone who really invests the energy into thinking about this will find that trying to speculate about extraterrestrial civilizations from the perspective of human beings is itself a kind of absurdity of nothingness.

Humans can crush an ant to death for no reason, and apparently the gap between the two is not as big as that of aliens.

The simple values of ants cannot understand why some creatures do things that have nothing to do with survival, and human values are even more meaningless in the universe.

Thinking about aliens is pointless, but John can't stop thinking.

"I authorize you, I give you all the permissions."

John leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and said the last sentence:

"Inform Sullivan that he knows who to call."

……

Class B base.

"It's a flat piece of land."

"Gone?"

"It's gone."

Lin Ju and Xiao Okada looked at each other, their eyes full of confusion.

"Lihuo" has arrived on Mars for two months of intensive monitoring, using all means to collect almost all the data on Plain Zero, and the geological experts and astrophysicists at the base have also seriously analyzed it for two months.

Now that all the valuable content has been summarized, they have come to the conclusion that Xiao Okada relayed.

There is really nothing special, judging from all the information that human beings have so far, the biggest feature of Plain Zero is that although the small plain is small, it is really flat.

This flat does not mean that the surface is flat, but that the surface of the loose soil detected by the fire is flat, and the surface is blown by the wind, forming various small mounds.

There are two possibilities behind the leveling: there are underground buildings, natural formations.

The probability of the two is the same, and it is impossible to further judge, all of them are speculations without reliable support, and the limit of satellite monitoring can only be achieved this step.

For the Zero Plain, the survey value of "Lihuo" has been squeezed out, and the next thing is a very powerful comprehensive reconnaissance satellite, and it is enough to keep a monitor on the Zero Plain.

"Then leave the fire silently as planned, and don't use it again until October next year, except to wake up when necessary."

Xiao Okada nodded, this was a strategy that had been planned for a long time.

Before the fire was launched, the base seriously considered the issue of communication secrecy, and in addition to disguising it as a natural signal, the most important thing was to carry out relay relays.

At first, they used the moon's "Laurel" series of satellites for relaying, and later with the help of the Tianmu-1 mission, the space shuttle dropped several microsatellites on the ecliptic plane, and now it is even more complicated.

The three probes launched a few months ago, "Descendant," "Golden Crow," and "Changsi," which were respectively aimed at the Sun, Mercury, and Lingshen, took turns to undertake the relay mission according to a certain law, and after several relays and reconcoctions, they were sent back to the Earth.

A large group of engineers have summarized the different timeline information obtained from the system, and various unrelated contents and different physical parameters are used as encryption methods, and the communication format of the SC09 spacecraft control system used directly for encoding is the coding format of alien civilization in the real sense, and there is no foundation on the earth.

But even so, Lin Ju is very cautious, every time he sends a message, it is transmitted from time to time through pseudo-random numbers, and the number of communications is limited.

Now that it has little value, the fire will go into a state of silence, and no more messages will be sent unless necessary.

However, this does not mean that "Leaving the Fire" is a loss-making business, and it will continue to collect information on Mars until it can be seen publicly, and thanks to its great weight and technical advantages, the survey capacity of one satellite is almost equal to that of all other Martian orbiters combined.

When the follow-up Mars mission is formulated, it can have the information reference it provides, which virtually saves a lot of time and cost.

Lin Ju's mind flashed one launch plan after another, telling himself that it was almost time, and it was almost time.

As soon as 6 months, Plain Zero will usher in the pace of robots, and there will definitely be some discoveries at that time.

"By the way, boss, someone wants to fund us to carry out the exploration program of the giant planetary system of the solar system."

"Who?"

Lin Ju was a little surprised, giant planet exploration is also deep space exploration, including Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune beyond the orbit of Mars, and many moons around them.

While traditional space exploration technology alone can take more than 10 or even 20 years to travel, the base's nuclear propulsion technology can compress the time to several years or even a year, but the cost is too high, so it has been clear that deep space missions will not be carried out for the time being.

It will only be considered to restart when the production capacity of the base is greatly increased in the future, or when the funds are abundant, but it is much better to wait a few years than to fly slowly for decades.

NACA is in time for a rare 176-year window of discovery, and who else would be willing to embark on such a thankless program?

IAU, International Astronomical Union.

Xiao Okada's name is unfamiliar, but there is an indescribable sense of familiarity.

"The chairmen of the 15th and 16th committees of the third faculty of the federation have been traveling around the world since last year, and they have already won many offers of funding from universities and scientific organizations.

A few days ago, they conveyed their hope through the person in charge of the Beijing branch that if Xinyuan could complete the commission within a year, they could confidently mobilize the entire federation to raise funds. ”

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has a long history, founded in Brussels, Belgium in 1919, and is a powerful non-governmental academic organization with the main purpose of organizing academic exchanges and protecting the astronomical observation environment.

They are also divided into 11 faculties and 51 committees, which are responsible for the popularization of education and academic promotion in different fields.

Although it is only a poorly organized academic organization, it is precisely this characteristic that makes it have a strong presence around the world, and it has the potential to raise funds for exploration programs.

The reason for their interest in Xinyuan is, of course, also because of nuclear propulsion technology, which makes it possible to quickly understand the situation of several gaseous planets in remote parts of the solar system, and even the Kuiper Belt.

(End of chapter)