Chapter 170 - 166 Space Cleaner_1

The Chang’e 4 mission’s landing site was within a crater, known scientifically as the Aitken Basin.

The reason for choosing this location is related to the analyses by scientists from various countries on this southern polar region in the past, believing it to be extremely rich in mineral and ice content. The utilizable ice layers alone could weigh up to 270 billion tons, enough to manufacture an endless supply of fuel.

If a base for producing fuel could be constructed here, it could even provide fuel and supplies for Mars spacecraft.

Launching the same weight of fuel from Earth compared to launching from the Moon, even just to low Earth orbit, would be much easier due to the Moon’s one-sixth gravity, saving a lot of resources.

The outside world only knew that Explorer 1 could travel by hopping, but the specific data and detection equipment it carried were unknown, let alone what Explorer 1 was there for.

In NACA’s view, the unknown represented fear. Every time their lunar orbit satellites passed over the South Pole, they would take photos for analysis, but it was in vain as the two rovers were too small to even see the lander, making the effort worthless.

However, inside the B-level Base, Lin Ju and the engineers from the Explorer project team worked together, operating a large spider to collect and analyze samples.

Due to the nearly 400,000 kilometers between the Earth and the Moon, even light takes 1.3 seconds to travel the distance, meaning ground control isn’t real-time.

With a round-trip signal transmission time of 2.6 seconds, plus relay forwarding, the time is even longer, which is why the Yutu No. 2 behaved in a slow and sluggish manner. Hasty operations could easily result in accidents like falling into pits.

However, this problem didn’t exist for Explorer—it was equipped with a castrated version of the SC09 control system, which had only two chips and was a low-power model with many restricted functions, but it was sufficient.

On the Moon, there’s no need for extremely complex image recognition capabilities and processing power since there are no market carts that suddenly cross without following traffic rules, nor stones blown by strong winds. The only unexpected events would be earthquakes and meteorites.

Therefore, most of the time ground control simply issues tasks to Explorer, such as: "Drill a hole at a certain location to a depth of 3 meters, conduct spectral analysis on the collected samples."

Then, the ground doesn’t need to do anything, and Explorer itself will analyze a safe and energy-efficient route and hop over slowly and methodically.

This means there’s no need to worry about the risks caused by delay—after all, the AI will avoid obstacles on its own.

Explorer’s luck wasn’t very good initially, upon arrival it only caught the tail end of the lunar daytime and was only active for a bit over 900 meters before it had to hibernate, waiting 14 days before being woken up again. This time, it was at the peak of its busy working period.

However, Explorer’s luck wasn’t too good. Before departure, engineers from New Yuan had read too many reports by experts from various countries, which made it sound as though the Lunar South Pole was teeming with ice, as if you’d encounter chunks of it every few steps. But Explorer’s photoelectric detector swept around countless times without finding any trace of water resources on the surface of the Aitken Basin.

In front of Lin Ju, Explorer completed its 19th drilling task, using the folding drill rod on its mechanical arm to bore down 3.4 meters deep, then bring it up for analysis using its onboard equipment:

Not a single ice crystal.

At this point, Explorer had traveled 1300 meters away from the lander, marking its path as it went, and did indeed discover some resources.

Apart from the abundant alumina, silica, and silicates, there was also ilmenite—a mineral rich in the Moon soil. There were also amounts of copper, the rare metal rhenium, antimony, and although in very low concentrations, if mined on a large scale they would be easier to obtain than on Earth.

However, smelting ores on the Moon to be shipped back to Earth... might still need a good while before it’s feasible. And even if it were feasible, it might not be necessary.

Transporting so much dead weight to near-Earth orbit, wrapping it in a protective layer, and then throwing it down would be more troublesome than setting up factories on the lunar surface.

The current priority is still to find water; without water resources, the Moon Base cannot operate over the long term.

Thankfully, they had plenty of time left, which was sufficient to send Explorer 2, 3, and 4 to the Moon for a thorough search. Eventually, they would find it.

"Boss, it’s normal that Explorer 1 couldn’t find anything. The Aitken Basin has an area of 4.9 million square kilometers and a diameter of 2500 kilometers. To really find something, it’d either take luck or deploying a large specialized prospecting rover that’s ten times the size of Explorer and can drill to a depth of 15 to 20 meters to have a significant chance of finding ice layers."

The chief designer of the Explorer program, Chen Xuan, explained to Lin Ju. Although this would not affect the speed at which Lin was funding the project, it was still best to make sure the boss understood.

Lin Ju thought about it and agreed, realizing that to entrust such a heavy-duty task to a small 400-kilogram detector, of which more than half the weight was its battery, was indeed asking too much.

Chen Xuan continued, "Explorer 1’s main task now is to scout for potential lunar base and landing sites while we wait for the subsequent detectors to arrive. By the end of the year, we might launch another dedicated Explorer 2 and, when Chang’e 5 arrives next year with a nuclear-powered rover, we can begin a large-scale exploratory operation."

Lin Ju asked, "So, what do we let Explorer do in the meantime, just let it roam freely?"

"Roaming freely" referred to an inbuilt function of Explorer 1, which, upon receiving a task to intensely explore a certain area, would determine its own exploration sites based on battery power and distance from the lander, and then autonomously carry out the survey work.

If nightfall approached, it would rush back to the vicinity of the lander beforehand to charge with the lander’s battery. This way, it could also maintain minimal activity during the lunar night using the energy stored from the lander’s solar panels.

Unlike Yutu No. 2, if it were to remain in the lunar night for a long time, most of its subsystems would enter hibernation due to a lack of power, risking a potential "blackout." Although the core components were kept warm by an RTG (Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator), if other components got too cold, it might not be possible to restart them.

If a blackout occurred, they could only leave it to fate. Most times, if lucky, it could be slowly reactivated by charging through the solar panels; if not, it could permanently lose contact.

Explorer had it much better – a "blackout" would only occur if the battery was too low before entering sleep mode.

Just as Chen Xuan was about to answer Lin Ju’s question, the phone in the control room rang.

"Hello?... Ah, yes, Explorer is indeed there. Mm-hmm, okay, okay."

The conversation didn’t last long, and Lin Ju, aware that the call was connected to the Beijing Yutu No. 2 Control Center, asked curiously:

"What happened? Is there a problem with Yutu No. 2?"

Chen Xuan sighed first before replying in a resigned tone:

"The space agency said they’ve found that Yutu No. 2’s solar panels might be dirty, reducing generation efficiency by 3%. It could be due to the recent dust cloud on the Moon. They asked if we could spare some time to clean it up."

Lin’s head was full of black lines, as it seemed the space agency was using Explorer as a ’Space Cleaner’.

Don’t ask why there would be Moon dust covering the high solar panels on the Moon, where there was no wind. The Moon dust on the surface, charged by cosmic rays and the high-energy bombardment of electrons from the sun, carried a static charge that easily adhered to spacecraft.

As more dust accumulated, the likelihood of mechanical jams, seal failures, a decrease in optical system sensitivity, component wear, and thermal control system faults increased over time, with the solar panels being the most affected.

Just a thin layer of Moon dust could greatly reduce power generation efficiency, which is why the space agency placed such emphasis on Explorer’s robotic arm...

Seeing as they were all from the same Earth, Chen Xuan planned a new exploratory route based on Explorer 2’s battery power, intending to use 72 hours to traverse and explore, then clean Yutu No. 2 before the lunar nightfall in order for it to charge.