I ask you to build tractors, but you build rockets?

The failure of the SRB gave the Orbital ATK company responsible for manufacturing it a blow a few hours after launch. Boeing, who was responsible for quality inspection, did not escape and received a severe scolding.

The preliminary test report made everyone break out in cold sweat. It was difficult to imagine how serious the consequences of the air explosion would be.

It can be said that if Claire had not made the decisive decision to forcefully separate the booster early despite the risk of failed launch into orbit, Artemis 2 would have become a tragedy in front of the whole world.

But the problem doesn't stop there.

The "Blue Moon" lander is waiting for maintenance.

On June 28, "Blue Moon" and the fuel refueling module were docked in the lunar orbit, and it took 6 hours to successfully transfer about 18 tons of fuel to "Blue Moon", making the latter's overall mass It has reached 40 tons, which is enough to meet the mission requirements.

In the early morning of June 30, "Blue Moon" successfully docked with the HALO module docking port of the "Gateway" space station, which seemed to go very smoothly.

At 23:00 on the evening of June 30 (central time), more than an hour after the launch of Artemis 2, the team responsible for monitoring the status of the "Gateway" sent a report directly to Claire.

The problem is very strange. The "Portal" will find that the attitude has drifted every five hours, and then initiate RCS correction. This has happened many times from the evening of June 28 to now.

The ground team didn't pay much attention to it in the first two times, but after the third time, they began to conduct a careful accident investigation. They first checked whether the sensor reported an error, and then discovered that the attitude and orbit were indeed drifting regularly.

Then after real-time detection, it was found that the space station did not drift every five hours, but that the space station had been continuously drifting. It was only after five hours of continuous small drift that the correction command triggering conditions were reached.

The Hall thruster of the PPE module is not working, so where does the power come from? The team quickly set their sights on the docking "Blue Moon".

However, upon inspection, it was found that all the attitude engines of the "Blue Moon" were not working, but based on the direction of deviation, there should indeed be a problem here.

They immediately called the Blue Origin development team, started detailed analysis with the design drawings and simulation software, and finally locked the offset thrust source at a position in the middle of the cylindrical lander.

Looking at the drawings, there is a pipeline that stores the liquid oxygen tank used by the astronauts to breathe inside the lander.

Although the sensors inside the lander did not send out any abnormal signals, it was basically certain that this pipeline was leaking, but I don’t know why the relevant pressure vessel sensors did not detect any abnormalities.

But in any case, the leakage of liquid oxygen is definitely a fact. It is calculated that an entire storage tank of liquid oxygen will be leaked before the arrival of the Artemis 2 crew - "Blue Moon" has a total of four such breathing fluids. Oxygen storage tanks, two are backup.

Therefore, the Artemis 2 crew must carry out maintenance activities on the lander after arriving at the space station. The fuel consumed by the "Gateway" to adjust the orbit is a trivial matter, at least it will definitely be enough for this mission.

But if it is determined that the lander cannot be repaired or the repair risk is too great, they must abandon the moon landing mission.

Now, the four astronauts on Artemis 2 are urgently reading the lander's emergency maintenance manual and formulating possible maintenance plans, and the ground team is working non-stop.

The astronauts didn't know that they were almost burned to pieces by the rocket. After the SRB wreckage was investigated, the ground chose to block the news. They only knew that the booster separated early due to sensor abnormalities, and they didn't know that they were already on the verge of life and death. suffered.

To this day, they are still working faithfully to complete their mission.

…

"How far away is Artemis 2 from us?"

"It has to be at least 10,000 kilometers, right? And I don't know which direction it is. The universe is three-dimensional, not flat like the ocean."

Unlike the tense atmosphere on Artemis 2, the three astronauts on Dawn 3 are now very relaxed.

Fang Lin captured a perfect photo of the round Earth from a perfect angle and was arranging his time as planned.

Thanks to the results of many Explorer robot inspection missions and the Tianmu-1 operation around the moon, the ground has a good understanding of the landing site and has entered it into the lander computer. As long as there are no problems with the system, it can handle almost any change.

Here we have to reflect an unexpected benefit of the separate lander: if an accident occurs during descent, the ascender can directly abandon the landing part and ignite to escape, which is similar to the escape tower when the spacecraft is launched.

It has enough fuel to re-enter orbit at any time and will never hit the lunar surface with astronauts.

Therefore, the Shuguang-3 crew is relatively relaxed. In addition to daily routine inspections and familiarity with the landing process, they are free to arrange their time for observation missions.

Fang Lin saw Zhang Zhiguang sitting near the porthole with his head lowered, and knew that he was memorizing a manuscript again.

"I represent China..."

The entire lunar landing process will be broadcast live around the world as planned. After the landing, Zhang Zhiguang's first steps and first words will be recorded through the camera on the outside of the lander, and then more professional television broadcasting equipment will be installed to complete the flag planting. and live speeches to the world.

The manuscript was written collectively by the superiors and must be read out without any mistakes or omissions. Each paragraph has a fixed meaning and represents the message that the superiors want to express to the outside world through the moon landing.

The word count is not many, less than 500 words, but the meaning is very significant.

And there will be a very meaningful object that will be placed at the landing site. It is said that this object caused quite a heated discussion, but it was finally put up.

However, from Fang Lin's personal opinion, he felt that it was a very correct decision to put that thing up, even if it took up more load.

"Old Fang, help me see what's going on."

Fang Lin followed the sound and found Ding Jihua, who was holding a laptop in the back half of the command module. The latter took off the VR and gently threw the laptop over.

"Look, why do things always show abnormalities here? I obviously followed the steps."

Fang Lin took a look and saw that it was the simulation console of the 'Explorer IV'.

Strictly speaking, Shuguang-3 has a crew of four, and the number of "people" on the moon is three.

The fourth one is still fixed on the floor of the lander. It is a secret payload that cannot be made public. Its name is "Fourteen". The registration code of the space agency is 'Explorer IV'. The name on the factory nameplate is "Warrior". II-M".

Model M, the special lunar version of Warrior 2, was included in the payload catalog of the lunar landing mission as early as April, but it was moved forward from Dawn 4 to Dawn 3.

The reason for the name "14" is also very simple: the first 'Explorer IV', the combination of the two numbers is "14".