Chapter 800 - 756: Lost Contact

"Loss of contact, which type is it? Is the transmitter damaged, or is it a total loss of control?"

As Jim and others were considering how to verify the news from the Aerospace Development Committee, Zhong Cheng was anxiously asking about the situation.

In fact, Firefly-1 had been out of contact for two hours, but at that time he was still receiving a visit from the NACA delegation, so the control center had first tried to solve the problem temporarily before deciding to notify NACA after giving up.

Zhong Cheng didn’t receive the news much earlier than they did; it was a completely unexpected situation.

He had just arrived at the control center, and the message he was given was that Firefly-1 had lost contact, but there are different types of loss of contact.

If the antenna was damaged, it would be an entirely acceptable accident—no one could guarantee that a solitary little machine millions of kilometers away wouldn’t have some malfunction as long as the control system was still intact. The subsequent probes would find a way to fix the antenna. It wouldn’t be a big problem.

But if the entire rover was completely destroyed or out of control, the problem would become very serious.

Clarifying which type of failure it was had become the current imperative task.

"The situation isn’t too good."

Lin Ju, who had arrived earlier than Zhong Cheng and knew more, looked somewhat inscrutable.

"The loss of contact was very sudden; it happened instantaneously during normal operation, cutting off all signals just as if it had vanished without any warning."

Um... it wasn’t Artemis’s doing this time; we can be sure that there’s an issue with Firefly-1."

Zhong Cheng: "Can Firefly-1 still be captured on camera?"

"Of course, Departing Fire has passed over Zero Plain several times and captured it in high-resolution photos. Firefly-1 hasn’t moved since the loss of contact. We can pretty much conclude it has stayed in place."

Zhong Cheng quickly had someone pull up the satellite images. The pictures, magnified at high power, were clear, and in different time intervals, the position of Firefly-1 almost completely overlapped.

If it was just the communications system that had broken down, Firefly-1’s AI would definitely proceed with emergency protocols and not simply remain stationary without any action.

Out of power? Impossible, the RTG battery was designed to last 10 years, and we’re barely into that.

Frozen? The time of loss of contact was during the Martian day, and although the temperature was low, even Earth’s commercial chips would have withstood it, let alone a well-protected rover.

Electric power system malfunction? A robust and independent rover like Firefly-1 had a rather comprehensive redundant system; they were independent and didn’t interfere with each other. Even if there was an issue, the chances of it suddenly completely freezing up were still too low.

Looking at Lin Ju and the others’ calm yet serious eyes, there probably was only one answer left.

"How could this be!"

"Yes, how could this happen!"

Shen Zuozhou echoed him, although their mission was to find traces of alien civilizations, such a sudden event still caught everyone off guard.

There weren’t few means that could cause Firefly-1 to "die" abruptly—a close-range EMP hit, or a sudden blast of intense radiation. Anyway, it wouldn’t be too difficult for humans to achieve.

Either way, "Departing Fire" would have difficulty detecting these traces in space and cannot detailedly examine the ground’s conditions.

So far, Departing Fire’s data was still normal; magnetic fields, temperature, and other standard readings showed no large-scale fluctuations, and no gravitational waves were detected.

The Aerospace Development Committee couldn’t determine what caused Firefly-1 to "die," so whether further probes should continue to the site was now an issue.

If the targets in the northern hemisphere were abandoned, there were still three probes and a large shuttle craft that could land on Zero Plain. Should they continue towards reconnaissance?

The nature of the mission had now changed; it was more akin to a scout going into the front lines. Losing a few probes wasn’t a big deal, but if it triggered some unforeseen event, it would be terrible.

The consensus was that the probability of living aliens in the Solar System wasn’t high, but since the gravity wave transmission system was still operational, it was entirely possible that a self-defense system existed. If activated by the probes, it could mean the immediate demise of human civilization.

Tianwen-2 and Tianwen-3 had already been prepared to begin landing, but now their orbits had been altered to temporarily hover in Martian orbit, halting the landing plans.

"They’re already discussing how to handle it up there, but for now, it’s probably better for us to do nothing at all to avoid further provocation," Shen Zuozhou said with a sigh. Doing nothing was definitely temporary; even if continuing forward was dangerous, they must conduct more detailed exploration.

If subsequent probes also lost contact abruptly and couldn’t send back any data, only astronauts would be left to take the risk.

Internally, sacrificing a few astronauts wasn’t unacceptable, but to send them out blindly was to treat lives as dispensable—the uncertainty was too great.

"The urgent task is to try to re-establish contact with Firefly-1, at least to figure out what happened to it, what caused it to lose contact," Zhong Cheng thought and said, which was currently the only way.

Lin Ju: "If the higher-ups make a decision, it’s still best to send down another probe. Actually, Zhu Rong would be the best candidate; it has many tools and humanoid robots that could potentially drag Firefly-1 out from a distance. The other probes are sister probes to Firefly-1 and approaching rashly might yield nothing."

Zhong and Shen both considered it for a moment and then merely nodded slightly.

Lin Ju knew they were hesitating; losing a few rovers would be easy to replace, and the Aerospace Development Committee wouldn’t even blink an eye before launching ten more.

But Zhu Rong was different. Its size, the difficulty of construction, and launch costs were all very high; the consequences of losing it were too severe, so they used it with caution.

Just like the Yamato Battleship, it had superior performance but couldn’t be risked lightly.

Skipping that topic, Zhong Cheng suddenly asked:

"How’s the training for March going? When will they conduct the lunar voyage?"

Shen Zuozhou: "It’s at the end of this month. The crew has completely adapted to the rotating space station, and they will complete a voyage to the Moon at the end of the month, along with delivering some supplies."

"And Enterprise? When can it resume flight training?"

"The Space Force says it’s doing well, it’s just that Enterprise’s landing method is a bit too vigorous. With an atmospheric environment, it’s vastly more complex than Chapter 9’s on the Moon. We need to select highly skilled elites, or they won’t even withstand dizziness."

Zhong Cheng nodded, not seeing this as a problem.

"We’re not short of elites. Which of the March’s crew isn’t elite? Arrange for one or two Enterprise crews as soon as possible to train jointly with March.

Um, the construction of Enterprise-2 also needs to be expedited; otherwise, the counterweight issue is troublesome."

Since March was entirely rotating, it had to ensure that the center of gravity remained at the geometric center. Simply docking with one shuttle would be imbalanced; during rotation, it must dock with two or four shuttles simultaneously.