Chapter 445 - 436: Lost Contact_1

"Little Bird, this is Texas, can you hear me?"

Little Bird, this is..."

Reid Wiseman was seated inside the Orion spacecraft’s command module, picking up the microphone and calling repeatedly.

Artemis II, in tradition with the Apollo era, had assigned different call signs to the command module and the lander—Victor was piloting the lander called "Little Bird," and the command module was "Texas."

It was now 21:02 Beijing time, and Dawn III on the lunar surface had just completed the flag-raising ceremony, celebrating the official commencement of work on the Cold Palace No.1 Base, and was preparing to stop the live broadcast to carry out work tasks.

According to the plan, "Little Bird" should have landed at a site about 35 kilometers from Dawn III.

But Wiseman knew it was impossible 30 minutes ago.

It was the final stage of the descent, with Victor maneuvering the HLS through its last major attitude adjustment, the landing zone now squarely within the targeted area—the mission seemed to be on the brink of success.

An hour before, Koch reported that the leaking tank sensor had reacted, but everyone, including Houston and themselves, agreed it posed no risk and could be ignored.

Even Koch hadn’t silenced the alarm, it stopped on its own because the pressure dropped to zero.

After a while, everyone felt that the risks were gone; the final landing could be handled even with manual astronaut control, and more than half of the fuel was still left. It seemed it would go smoothly.

However, at that moment, Wiseman suddenly heard Victor on ’Little Bird’ cry out:

"Shit, it’s not responding."

"What’s happening, Victor?"

"Zzz... a small problem, seems like a minor issue with the communication module... zzz... adjusting... zzz... beep—"

The transmission, mixed with loud current noise, ended abruptly, the "beep" likely signified Victor turning off the microphone.

Several seconds passed, and his voice reappeared, this time much clearer.

"Hello, hello? This is Victor."

Houston: "This is Houston, ’Little Bird,’ why did the communication cut off?"

"I don’t know, the main communication module just crapped out, but I’ve switched to the backup communication. No issues now, that’s all."

Although the communication troubles weren’t immediately fatal, Houston and the astronauts on the "Gateway" began troubleshooting, while "Little Bird" continued to focus on the landing task.

Less than a minute later, Victor’s voice rose again:

"Fuck! Navigation failure, navigation failure!

The electronic navigator has lost signal, it’s not working, it has failed!"

The astronauts at the other end of the radio and Houston immediately panicked. "Blue Moon" was equipped with two electronic navigation systems and one inertial navigation system, which were crucial to ensure the astronaut’s accurate orbit insertion and landing at the predetermined site. Losing control over their position could be extremely dangerous.

Without ground guidance, Victor began the emergency procedures detailed in the manual, rebooting and initializing backups, but after a few minutes of frantic effort, no good news was heard.

It was then, Wiseman heard Claire’s calm voice:

"Little Bird, this is Claire Boden, abort the landing mission immediately, use the remaining fuel to re-enter orbit, and Wiseman will come get you back home;

Repeat, abort the landing mission immediately, cancel the Artemis II mission, get back into orbit now, get into orbit now!"

A full minute passed, perhaps after a final futile effort, Victor chose to give up:

"Houston, I will manually re-enter a 30-kilometer orbit, ’Little Bird’ will abort the mission."

Due to the electronic navigation outage, Victor wisely chose to activate manual mode to operate the lander. At this moment, Lin Ju saw the altitude increasing.

But the acceleration lasted only about a minute when Wiseman heard both Koch and Victor curse simultaneously:

"Power out, cabin power out, we’ve lost electricity!

All the lights are gone, I can’t see anything, oh, the engines have cut out, the engines have stopped!"

NACA immediately switched off the live broadcast and started full-scale rescue efforts for "Little Bird," but communication became intermittent again.

Even the closer "Gateway" space station received incomplete radio signals, with no full sentences discernible—only the sense of danger the two astronauts were in could be heard through their voices.

At 20:47, "Little Bird" disappeared from the radar, and communication was completely cut off.

This meant that its trajectory had deviated too much and it had left the directed radar range.

Houston immediately descended into chaos, desperately initiating emergency protocols and instructing the astronauts on "Gateway" to keep calling.

They soon thought of using seismic monitoring—lunar landers are equipped with these devices to detect the geological structure and mineral composition of the lunar surface, and the Isis Rover had the most sensitive detectors on board.

Fifteen minutes passed, and ISIS had not transmitted any impact signals, meaning the engines must have successfully restarted, but it was unclear whether it had landed somewhere or re-entered orbit—of course, if it had crashed too far away, the seismic monitors would not have detected it.

"Reed, let me take over."

Jeremy Hanson took the transmitter from Wiseman and continued with the call:

"Little Bird, this is Texas, please report..."

Wiseman, exhausted, leaned against the window, his mind rapidly processing the situation:

As long as they hadn’t lost power, he believed that Victor would be able to control the lander; HLS still retained the most basic mechanical transmission controls, and Victor had undergone 150 hours of specialized training—he had to trust in his capabilities.

There was plenty of fuel left, after all, HLS was an integral lander; the optimal choice was to orbit, and the most likely and best outcome was that they had already entered orbit and were surely trying to make contact;

If it was a landing, then there must have been even more severe malfunctions in the cabin preventing even an orbital maneuver from being completed, making the landing all the more dangerous—a death probability of at least 50%.

The lander had accounted for extreme situations; not only was there an individual emergency kit, the spacesuits were also equipped with communication devices—in theory, as long as they weren’t dead, they should still be reachable.

Checking the time, if they had chosen to land, they should have reached the lunar surface within 20 minutes at most. If no news came by then, they might have to request international assistance.

Yet, there was another problem that puzzled Wiseman—and earlier the communication module, then the navigator, and finally, the entire cabin lost power. It indicated the entire electrical system had encountered a problem that caused one issue after another, such a major flaw shouldn’t have gone undetected during inspections.

And then there was that odd sensor, though there was no evidence, Wiseman couldn’t shake off the feeling they were related.