Chapter 631 - 616 Surveillance

"Hurry, or we won’t make it in time."

While checking the Moon rover, Victor urged Wiseman, who was retrieving the telescope, over the radio.

"Almost... there, let’s go!"

Wiseman, holding the camera, got into the passenger seat of the Moon rover. Before he could even grab the rollover bar in front of him, Victor stepped on the accelerator and dashed off towards the distant dunes.

Geographical locations on the Moon with names are mostly famous craters or geologically significant structures, but now there was an addition called "Friendship Hill."

"Friendship Hill" was where the two Moon expedition teams had officially met the day before. After a brief negotiation, the previously unnamed small hill was given an official name and designated as a public area.

Located at a relatively high elevation with a flat open space, Friendship Hill is situated midway between the Artemis III’s "Columbus" campsite and the "Yushu No. 1" base, offering a good vantage point to observe both camps.

After the "Friendship Action," Houston immediately realized the potential of setting up an excellent observation point there to monitor the activities of the Chinese.

However, Artemis III did not have the necessary facilities and could only temporarily rely on the astronauts to travel there.

The distance from Friendship Hill to the Columbus camp was only five or six kilometers. Victor maneuvered the Moon rover through the terrain, and within seven or eight minutes, they reached the summit.

Wiseman immediately jumped down, fiddled with the tripod, and set up the telescope for calibration.

Meanwhile, Victor, with a device resembling a military tablet called the Multi-functional Fast Interactive Terminal (MFT), connected the telescope and activated the real-time recording function.

Wiseman quickly found their target: Chapter 9, which was undergoing final preparations before takeoff.

This was a special task handed down by NACA, who was very interested in Chapter 9 and eager to acquire actual flight footage of the craft.

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

From several kilometers away, Chapter 9 appeared as a huge dark silhouette, due to the fact that the lunar day had just begun and the angle of the light was not very good.

But even so, Chapter 9 looked incredibly impressive, larger than the still-unorganized Yushu No. 1 Base.

"Damn it, living inside must be like staying in a beachfront villa. Every person might even have their own private cabin, while all we have is an oversized drum washing machine."

Victor was very envious of the four astronauts on Skylight III. During their meeting the previous day, he found out that Chapter 9 had already implemented separate restrooms and a dining area, making the ship practically a mobile mini-base, incredibly comfortable.

This made Chapter 9 capable of landing anywhere on the Moon to conduct long-term missions without concern for excessive logistical issues.

"We’ll have it soon too. Before we left, I heard Jim saying that they had already requested SpaceX to use the Starship as a blueprint to develop a new Moon Lander with an interior and living space even larger than Chapter 9."

"Sounds good. I just hope the ’blueprint’ doesn’t blow up the day after tomorrow, or else we’ll retire without ever getting to experience it."

Of course, Victor remembered Starship, and he also knew that the fourth Starship was set to launch on December 29th. Musk’s hope was that if this launch achieved successful orbit, the following steps of recovery and space station construction plans would immediately commence.

However, even if everything went smoothly, the Moon Lander, based on the blueprint of Starship, would not be seen for at least another two years, and Victor was not sure if he would still be able to participate in lunar missions by then.

"...hey, it took off!"

Reed suddenly shouted, then immediately leaned on the telescope, focusing and opening the automatic tracking. Victor turned his gaze back to the MFT and indeed saw Chapter 9 swaying as it left the ground.

The pale blue flame of the hydrogen-oxygen engine was almost transparent under the light, and the telescope could only see the airflow stirring up the lunar dust on the ground, but surprisingly, there was less lunar dust than expected.

"They’ve leveled that area."

Both came to the conclusion at the same time, and then saw Chapter 9 climb rapidly at a steep angle, losing focus and failing to track in the telescope at a height of one thousand meters, eventually leaving only a blurred blue halo.

Victor, having witnessed the fast and succinct takeoff process, widened his eyes and murmured involuntarily,

"That’s like a UFO, almost exactly like the UFO videos I’ve seen online."

Wiseman also stood in place, staring at the pitch-black sky for quite a while, but he eventually came to his senses to check if the recording was complete, saved it, and began packing the equipment back onto the lunar rover.

They had not just come out to observe Chapter 9; NACA speculated that the unmanned ice mining vehicles had already entered the interior of Kuom Impact Crater, so they had to check on those little fellows as well.

Kuom Impact Crater was a "mini" impact crater, with a maximum diameter of less than 5 kilometers, making it not difficult to find them.

In addition, there was the secret mission of finding the Moon’s "fifth man," but since Artemis II crashed into a cave complex far from Columbus Camp, it would require a detour of about 20 kilometers to investigate thoroughly, and they did not currently have the capacity to do so.

After quickly packing their things, the two men were ready to set off again. Lacking precise navigation instruments, they had previously relied on a detailed electronic map, which required constant correction of their coordinates according to the actual terrain.

The lunar rover also carried a few lightweight detection instruments, which they were going to use to detect easily exploitable ice resources.

This could also serve as a cover for their "peeping" operation. Both Yushu No.1 Base and those unmanned engineering vehicles had cameras, and NACA would not stoop to sneaking around when the others were not present, even if they really planned to do so, the astronauts would not carry out such a mission.

Wiseman had planned a relatively smooth route in advance, and Victor, recognizing the surrounding terrain, started the journey again.

Meanwhile, a kilometer away behind a high piece of ground, Explorer II-9 robot slightly turned its photodetector, relaying its movement trajectory in real-time to the satellite above.

In surveillance, no humans could be more responsible or more patient than machines, and these significantly less agile spider robots were perfectly suited for such tasks.

This task would go on for quite a while, as there were no powerful optical surveillance satellites on the Moon; the work of ground robots was irreplaceable.

Indeed, the lunar blasting operations had a significant impact on lunar spacecraft. A space station like U-Tu could adjust its orbit to fly behind the side opposite the nuclear explosion to avoid being affected, but the satellites had to leave it to fate.

The current loss of a few satellites in lunar orbit is tolerable, but any further losses would be very painful, so the recently launched satellites to the Moon have been cheap cubic satellites, with weaker functions that will just have to suffice; even if they break, it’s only a matter of a few million dollars at most.

This inconvenience had been recognized by all parties involved in the lunar operations, and in response, they began to push for adjustments in the nuclear blasting plans.