Chapter 614 - 602 Signal

Deng Lei, immersed in his task, kept his eye on the clock. When he could already see the Pacific Ocean, he focused his attention on the vast sea, searching for any abnormalities.

However, he also knew it was a futile effort. Not to mention that the eastern hemisphere was currently facing the sun, even if it was on the side away from the sun, it was highly unlikely that he would be able to spot the light from a small rocket.

Only the large area CCD of an infrared remote sensing satellite could accurately capture the target in real time, especially those satellites used for estimating agricultural yields.

Indeed, the difficulty of satellites used for agriculture yield estimation was much higher than that of anti-missile monitoring satellites. Although both employed infrared remote sensing, the precision required for agriculture yield estimation was to an almost absurd degree.

When crops were infested by pests or damaged by floods, when the ears of rice weren’t as full or when they drooped, there would be a slight fluctuation of just a few tenths of a degree Celsius in temperature when viewed from space. The agricultural yield estimation satellites had to eliminate countless interferences over hundreds of kilometers to gauge the crop conditions accurately based on these extremely subtle infrared radiation changes. In contrast, the flames from a missile launch were like a blazing torch in the darkness, extremely hard to miss.

It just goes to show how important it is to develop modern agriculture...

Deng Lei’s eyes were, of course, not infrared CCDs. He started his search at 10:50 and after 15 minutes hadn’t spotted anything unusual, leading him to question whether there was a fault with his head-mounted display.

Just as he was about to turn off the immersive mode, a tiny but glaring white spot suddenly appeared on the slowly moving azure Earth.

The spot originated from the edge of Honshu Island and in an instant occupied about one-tenth of the entire island’s area, like a hole in a colorful projection screen, emitting bright white light.

But it lasted only for a dozen seconds or so before the white light quickly turned yellow and dimmed sharply, replaced by a cyclone that expanded outward—Deng Lei knew it was the shape of a mushroom cloud.

The growing mushroom cloud, much more spectacular than the light of the explosion, almost covered the entirety of the northwestern part of Honshu Island, and he could imagine how shocking it must have been to witness from the ground.

He kept his gaze on the explosion site until the Dawn One Spaceship, already in the latter stages of acceleration, entered the southern hemisphere and was out of sight.

...

Florida.

"No! I don’t want to see this kind of thing again!"

Victor was sitting in the command module of Artemis III, complaining directly over the radio.

It was 9 in the morning Central time on the 20th, and eleven hours earlier when the nuclear bomb had exploded, NACA had seen a spacecraft departing from the Tiangong Space Station heading for the Moon.

Dawn One’s mission had been quietly announced just half an hour before departure, and only then did NACA realize that their Chinese counterparts had shamelessly sent a vanguard team ahead without any sense of sportsmanship.

So Artemis III and they will arrive on the Moon on the same day?

Setting aside how John had become a master of clearing desktops, although Robert had no prior launch plans, he also instructed Victor "not to waste time on unnecessary things."

This sense of being forced into a competition immediately triggered Victor’s traumatic memories, something he already associated with PTSD.

"Victor, this was always our duty, and NACA will not skip any of the pre-landing procedures this time, so there’s no need to worry about accidents," said Deputy Director Jim, trying to comfort him, but Robert instead remained silent and expressionless.

He had already concluded that it was a deliberate act targeted at him by his Chinese counterparts. Otherwise, were they also in a rush to spend Christmas Eve on the Moon?

Perhaps those colleagues were laughing as they named this operation "Santa Claus", then changed the code name of Dawn Number One to "Moose", deliberately going to the Moon early to deliver Christmas gifts to Artemis III?

But no one at NACA would accept taking such a risk again. The near disaster in July had left the entire American aerospace community unprecedentedly serious and cautious about manned flights. It was estimated that it would take four to five years to barely forget the shadow cast by Artemis II.

Robert could only hope that Victor and the others were luckier, even if only by a minute.

"ten, nine..."

The launch pad that had launched SLS five months before was counting down again, and massive clouds of white vapor began billowing from the tail of the SLX rocket.

As the world’s second-most numerous and third-most powerful heavy-lift rocket, originally designed for the Starship, its stage-one technology had already fully matured, and its reliability as a single-use rocket was up to standard.

Thirty-three liquid oxygen and methane engines started in sequence, carrying the crew of Artemis III on their second journey to the Moon.

On the way to the Moon, again, there were two teams accompanying them.

...

The success of Artemis III had allowed Robert to relax a bit. In his view, NACA had turned the darkest page, and everything was back on track.

He didn’t linger long in Houston and went back to headquarters that evening, where more matters awaited him.

The Moon mission was at the forefront, including the lunar demolition plan. It seems the Pentagon couldn’t get enough of nuclear blasts, indicating that United Mining might conduct lunar nuclear tests as early as March.

Compared to the three "little things" on Earth, the "engineering explosive devices" for the Moon mission were heavyweight behemoths.

The yield of the third aerial hydrogen bomb detonated yesterday was 1.32 million tons, just grazing the line drawn by the IAEA.

Even though the explosion altitude was deliberately kept low, it was said that the flash from the nuclear blast could still be seen from the high-rise buildings in Tokyo. All unprotected civilian communication and electrical infrastructure within the control zone were paralyzed, and the media reported a permanent loss of at least two trillion yen.

What about the Moon? A 1.5 million ton yield was merely an appetizer, with plans reaching up to a crazy billion-ton yield. Robert seriously doubted whether the explosion would affect spacecraft in Earth’s orbit.

Just dealing with this plan alone was headache-inducing for Robert, not to mention the upcoming construction of the Moon Base and the Mars exploration mission planned for the first half of next year.

Having just processed the pile of documents, Boris from the Mars exploration team came knocking again.

The intensive Mars exploration plans of the Aerospace Development Committee were no secret, and NACA, gritting its teeth, had followed suit. However, Boris, who was extremely familiar with Mars, was in charge of the details.

Robert quickly glanced over his plan and found no major issues, but he then saw Boris close the door with a hesitant and reticent demeanor.

"What’s the matter, Boris? If it’s a matter of funding, we can allocate more."

After hesitating for a while, Boris said something completely unexpected:

"Director, our Mars satellite has intercepted an unknown signal. Judging by the format, it does not belong to any of our known Mars probes and cannot be decrypted.

Although it seems to be a naturally occurring emission from a celestial body, we assess there’s a 90% chance it was emitted by intelligent life, and I suspect the source is near Mars."