Chapter 443 - 434 The First Step_1

Stepping out was merely the beginning of extravehicular activity.

Inside the ground command center, Lin Ju held the detailed checklist for the current landing mission.

The next item was the critical flag installation; two astronauts had to take down two foldable electric flagpoles and raise a pair of flags.

Unlike the Apollo missions that "just took a look," the Dawn project was serious about building a permanently manned Moon Base; just planting a small flag wouldn’t be enough to make a statement.

The foldable flagpoles carried by Dawn III had an "L"-shaped cross-section with grooves, consisting of twelve 1.8-meter segments that could be assembled into two 10.8-meter flagpoles, then secured with thin steel cables and ground spikes, which were quite sturdy on the windless and rainless Moon.

This task would take approximately 30 to 40 minutes to complete, and the two astronauts were now moving down higher-definition television broadcasting equipment to send back better-angled images.

The Apollo missions of the ’70s were heavily criticized for moon landing conspiracy theories, partly due to the extremely poor quality of the video recordings, which were transferred from film – a method that was acceptable for its time, but looks very poor now.

Without a doubt, the live broadcast signal quality of Dawn III was excellent, with numerous high-powered satellites and space stations available for relay, resulting in high bitrate and resolution, ensuring no reproach on its authenticity could be made based on image quality.

Now, the progression of the Dawn III mission had reached 99.8%, and it was time to see how the Artemis II team was doing.

Lin Ju leaned closer to Yun Hongjun. As the chief designer of Long March rockets, he paid close attention to Artemis II and was currently watching NACA’s YouTube live stream on his tablet.

"How far along are they?"

Yun Hongjun tilted the tablet for a better view, "They’re about halfway down, should land in about 50 to 60 minutes."

"The technical foundation of Blue Origin isn’t bad at all; a gadget rushed out in such a hurry and it actually works."

Upon hearing Lin Ju’s quip, Yun Hongjun shook his head with a smile and said:

"You young folks always tend to oversimplify others. With their century or two of accumulation, when they really put their mind to it, they can be formidable."

After a brief chat, Lin Ju sat next to Yun Hongjun, glancing between the busied astronauts and the tablet.

By the time Zhang Zhiguang had raised the flagpole, Artemis II should also be landing, right?

A person of African descent and a woman astronaut, truly a model of correctness. Looking at the altitude... there are still 14.4 kilometers to go...

Lin Ju suddenly furrowed his brow and cocked his head, taking another glance at the YouTube stream’s UI; now the display read "Height: 14,600 m." 14.6 kilometers? How did it increase?

"Yun, take a look at this."

As Yun Hongjun, whose attention was still on the exuberant Fang Lin, looked down, he didn’t immediately notice anything amiss until Lin Ju pointed out the altitude display and he then realized.

This... could it be that the TV station adding the UI made an error? The altitude was rising?

At the current rate of descent, it was impossible to judge whether the lander was ascending or descending by using the Moon as a reference, leading Yun Hongjun to initially suspect that there was an issue with the live broadcast team.

The two decided to keep watching, and after about one minute, the altitude readout reached 22.4 kilometers, paused for about two seconds, and then began to decrease again.

But Yun Hongjun sharply noticed that the rate of descent was accelerating.

A simple calculation revealed that the acceleration of the descent was about 1.5 to 2m/s^2, with the Moon’s gravitational acceleration being 1.62m/s^2.

Before he could fully confirm this finding, the live broadcast on the tablet abruptly switched to two male and female anchors who blandly chattered for a bit before the image changed back to a real-time view from the exterior of the "Gateway" space station.

"Did you see that?"

Lin Ju nodded gravely, it had been about five seconds from when the altitude halted at 22.4 kilometers to when the feed was cut. He remembered the last observed altitude and quickly used his cellphone calculator to figure out that the acceleration was roughly 1.7m/s^2

There was only one possible explanation for this situation: the lander’s engine was not working, and it was rapidly descending under the Moon’s gravitational pull.

At an altitude of about 20,000 meters, without deceleration, it would take roughly 160 seconds, or about two and a half minutes, to crash into the lunar surface.

It was probably not an issue with the live broadcast, but rather "Blue Moon" had encountered big trouble!

Yun Hongjun and Lin Ju hurried to find Academician She, realizing that a serious incident had occurred!

"Lost power?"

The Big Shot who was still at a meeting in Huayin, accompanying senior officials while waiting for the upcoming Earth-Moon transmission, suddenly received a phone call from Qiongzhou stating that "Blue Moon" had lost power during the live broadcast, and the current situation was unclear.

On the other end of the line, Yun Hongjun, who had witnessed the entire process, was reporting:

"...I believe the rising altitude Lin saw was real, it must have been some malfunction prompting the two astronauts to abandon the lunar landing. So, the engine accelerated in an attempt to re-enter orbit, but this effort ultimately failed due to power loss;

Then, just before the feed was cut, the lander was free-falling at the Moon’s free fall speed. Without further attempts to avert disaster, it would’ve been a complete loss of both machine and lives!"

"Hiss—" The Big Shot inhaled a breath of the cool summer air, causing a sour sensation in his gums.

If Artemis II were to crash on the Moon, then the newly raised flag of Dawn III would have to be lowered by half nearly as soon as it had been hoisted, and the declaration to the people of the world would have to be turned into an elegy.

As he felt a headache coming on, the other end of the phone was snatched by Academician She:

"I have an idea. If Artemis II has indeed completely lost power, it will certainly crash within two to three minutes... It’s already about that time. Our previously launched Dawn 2 lander is equipped with a seismic monitoring device. If it crashes at such a high speed, the instrument will definitely respond!

I will have someone check the data immediately!"

"Good, I won’t hang up the phone. We must first confirm their status!"

On the other end, Academician She immediately called the Moon unmanned probe control center in the Capital, requesting an immediate update of the seismic monitoring data.

He checked his watch; five minutes had passed since "Blue Moon" began to fall. If it had indeed completely lost power, it would have been obliterated by now.

Falling from an altitude of 20,000 meters, even under lunar gravity, one could be accelerated to nearly 260 meters per second, almost 930 kilometers per hour—equivalent to a jet flying at top speed. At such velocity, any collision with the lunar surface would render any protective measures useless; it was likely that even the astronauts’ remains would have fused with the lander.

The control center in the Capital, prodded by Academician She online, produced the results after two minutes:

"Reporting to the Commander, we have received the latest data from 22 seconds ago. The seismic monitors detected no anomalies, no unusual geological activities, no unconventional vibrations, and no other abnormal phenomena recorded over the past 24 hours;

We also accessed the vibration monitors on Yutu-3B, and no anomalies were found there either."

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

"So you’re saying the lander didn’t crash?"

"Nothing within five minutes, it must have succeeded in starting again, but we do not know whether they will continue the landing or give up."

"Then, let’s proceed with the original plan as normal, and have others continue to follow up!"

"Yes!"