"Hurry, or we won't be able to catch up."

Victor examines the rover while onto Wiseman, who is retrieving his telescope, on the radio.

"Right now...... Alright, let's go! ”

Wiseman sat on the co-pilot of the lunar rover with the camera, and before he could grab the roll cage in front of him, Victor stepped on the accelerator and rushed out and headed straight for the sand dunes in the distance.

The geographical location on the moon is basically a famous crater or a geological formation of great significance, but now there is a "Friendship Mountain".

"Friendship Mountain" is the place where the two lunar landing teams officially met yesterday, and after a brief negotiation between the two sides, the unnamed hill received an official name and existed as a public area.

Mount Friendship is a high but flat clearing, and is halfway between Camp Columbus where Artemis III landed and Yushu 1, from where the condition of both camps is well observed.

In the immediate aftermath of Operation Friendship, Houston realized that there was an excellent observation point to monitor the movements of the Chinese.

However, Artemis III does not have the corresponding conditions, and for the time being, it can only be visited by the astronauts themselves.

The distance from Friendship Mountain to Columbus's camp was only five or six kilometers, and Victor drove the lunar rover to the left and right, reaching the top of the mountain in seven or eight minutes.

Wiseman immediately jumped down, fiddled with the bracket and set up the telescope on it.

Victor on the side held an MFT (Multi-functional fast interactive terminal) similar to a military tablet to operate and connect the telescope and turned on the real-time recording function.

Wiseman soon found their target: the Nine Chapters, which were making final preparations before takeoff.

This was a special assignment from NACA, who were very interested in the Chapter 9 and wanted to get its actual flight footage.

However, the two astronauts were also curious about the "battleship" and were happy to carry out this mission.

From a few kilometers away, the Jiuzhang looked like a huge black shadow, because the current moonlight had just begun, and the angle of the light was not very good.

But even so, the Nine Chapters looked extremely spectacular, and it was even larger than the Yushu No. 1 base that had not yet been cleaned up.

"Damn, they must have been enjoying it like a beach house, and everyone might have their own cabin, and we just had a big front-loading washing machine."

Victor was very envious of the four astronauts of Tianmu 3, and when they met yesterday, he learned that the Jiuzhang had realized independent toilets and restaurants, and the entire spacecraft was equivalent to a small base that could be moved, which was so comfortable that it was not good.

This allows the Nine to land anywhere on the moon and carry out long-term missions without having to think too much about logistics.

"We'll have it soon, and I heard Jim say before we left that they've asked SpecaX to develop a new lunar lander based on Starship, with an interior container and living space larger than the Chapter Nine."

"Sounds good, I hope the 'blueprint' won't blow up the day after tomorrow, otherwise we won't be able to experience it when we retire."

Victor, of course, remembers the Starship, and he also knows that the fourth Starship will be launched on December 29, and Musk's expectation is that if it can be successfully put into orbit this time, the recovery program and the space station construction plan will be launched immediately.

But even if all goes well, the Starship-modeled lunar lander won't be seen until at least two years later, and Victor isn't sure he'll be able to take part in a lunar mission at that time.

“…… Hey, it's taking off! ”

Reed suddenly shouted, and then immediately leaned down in front of the telescope to focus on auto-tracking, and Victor also looked at the MFT again, and sure enough, he saw the Nine Chapter number shaking off the ground.

The pale blue tail flame of the hydrogen-oxygen engine was almost transparent under the watch, and the telescope could only see the air currents whipped up the moon dust on the ground, but surprisingly the moon dust was far less than expected.

"They've leveled the place."

The two of them thought of the answer at the same time, and then they saw that the Jiuzhang was rapidly climbing upwards at a very high speed, and at an altitude of one thousand meters, the telescope lost focus and failed to track, and finally saw only a blurry blue halo.

Witnessing the quick and concise take-off, Victor's eyes widened and he muttered involuntarily:

"It's like a UFO, like a UFO video I've seen online."

Wiseman also stood still and stared at the dark sky for a moment, but he still came back to his senses to check that the footage was complete, and after saving it, he began to pack up his equipment and put it back on the rover.

They didn't just come out to observe the Chapter Nine, NACA speculated that the unmanned ice-mining vehicles had entered the interior of the Qom impact crater, and they had to go see the little guys.

Qom craters are "mini" craters with a maximum diameter of less than 5 kilometres, and it is not difficult to find them.

In addition, there is also the secret mission to find the "fifth man" on the moon, but the cave complex where Artemis II crashed is far away from Columbus Camp, and if you go there, you have to go around about 20 kilometers, so you can't afford to go to investigate it carefully.

After simply packing up their belongings, the two of them were ready to go again, lacking accurate navigation instruments, and they used to rely on a delicate electronic drawing, and they had to constantly correct their coordinates according to the actual situation.

The rover also carries several less heavy instruments and is also on its way to detect easily exploitable ice resources.

This can also be used as a cover for "voyeurism" operations, whether it is the Yushu No. 1 base or those unmanned engineering vehicles have cameras, NACA has not fallen to the point of touching others while others are not there, even if they really intend to do so, astronauts will not perform such a mission.

Wiseman had planned a relatively smooth route ahead of time, and Victor recognized the surrounding terrain and set off on the journey again.

Behind a high ground a kilometer away, the Explorer II-9 robot rotates its photodetector slightly, transmitting its trajectory to satellites in the sky in real time.

No human is more responsible and patient when it comes to surveillance, and these spider bots, which are much less flexible, are well suited to perform similar tasks.

This work will continue for a long time, and there will be no powerful optical reconnaissance satellites on the moon, and the work of ground-based robots will be irreplaceable.

In fact, the lunar blasting project has had a great impact on the lunar spacecraft, and space stations such as the "Black Rabbit" can also fly to the back side of the explosion side by adjusting the orbit to avoid being affected when the nuclear bomb explodes, and the satellites have to resign themselves to fate.

At present, the loss of several satellites in lunar orbit is acceptable, but if the loss is increased, it will be very painful, so the satellites that have recently hit the moon are all cheap cube satellites, and the functional weaknesses are improvised to use, and if they are broken, it will be a matter of several million at most.

This inconvenience has been realized by the parties involved in the lunar operation, and in turn they have begun to push for adjustments to the nuclear blasting program.

(End of chapter)