Reborn in 2011, I am the chief designer of aerospace.

As the astronauts completed their spaceflight mission, the Space Electronic Platform (SEP) will be deployed at multiple different sites. There was great hope that these platforms would continue transmitting data long after Sheng Tianhong and his team returned to Earth. This will be a perfect memorial to the mission, and looking down at the SEP model built from plywood and cardboard, Sheng Tianhong felt immense pride in his outstanding achievement.

"Alright, Song Xingye, SEP is installed," he said. "What's next?"

"Received. According to our checklist, one of you will be responsible for setting up CELSS, and the other will be responsible for collecting samples."

"Isn't it lunchtime yet?" Mira pleaded.

Sheng Tianhong laughed, "Let me help you, Mira. You take care of setting up CELSS, and I'll go around searching for those damn samples."

They dragged their heavy steps back to the MET, and Sheng Tianhong took another sip of the bland Tang tea from the tube around his neck.

He thought to himself that it would be nice to have a few ice-cold beers and watch TV, but he simply couldn't find the time. Ever since he joined this mission, he always felt like he didn't have enough time.

Sheng Tianhong helped Mira move the simulated CELSS kit out of the MET. This controlled environment life support system was a small inflatable greenhouse, packaged in the shape of a plastic disc. Sheng Tianhong and Mira laid the disc flat on the ground, and Mira immediately made a small foot pump and began to inject air into the rib structure of the greenhouse. Soon, a dome about four meters high gradually took shape.

By the time she finished her work, Mira was drenched in sweat. "My God, Sheng Tianhong, wearing these boots and stepping on this pump is really exhausting."

Are you planning to work at the quarry?

"No, no," Mira said, "Let me go tend to my damn vegetable garden."

She retrieved a simple aluminum shovel from the metal detector and began scraping the soil with little enthusiasm. Later, she would install a small sprinkler system inside the dome and begin planting soybeans and potatoes. The principle behind this plan was simple: the carbon dioxide-rich Martian atmosphere could permeate into the plants through the greenhouse's ventilated walls, while the plastic dome would effectively absorb large amounts of solar heat. Based on limited observational data from the R country lander, the Martian soil appeared to possess all the necessary conditions for crop cultivation, except for phosphorus and free water; therefore, Mira planned to improve the soil by adding nutrient additives.

This CELSS equipment is experimental in nature; they do not intend to grow food to supply the first Mars exploration mission. Its main purpose is to verify whether crops can be grown on Mars, which will point the way for the technological roadmap of future long-term missions and may even lay the foundation for the first permanent colony.

Similarly, the Search for Mars will also carry a long-term experimental project called ISPP (In-Situ Propellant Production). Astronauts will install a device to extract oxygen from the compressed Martian atmosphere and attempt to extract hydrogen and oxygen from underground water sources. If it can be proven that the propellant and oxidizer needed for the return journey can be manufactured on Mars, the weight and cost of future trips to and from Mars will be reduced by more than half.

Sheng Tianhong dragged MET forward, heading towards the north of Mira.

"Okay, Song Xingye, I'm now coming down from this layer of loess and onto a bed of gravel that looks quite loose and compacted. I can see some striations, like marks left by water erosion, it seems like water has flowed through here..."

Song Xingye asked, "Why don't you take a sample?"

"receive."

He selected a relatively flat location and set up the sundial. He then walked around the instrument, carefully taking pictures from various angles. Next, he conducted mechanical tests, pressing a spring-loaded metal plate into the soil, inserting a cylindrical probe into the ground, and placing aggregate blocks into a handheld stone crusher. Throughout the operation, he continuously reported the measurement data to Song Xingye.

After he completed a comprehensive record of the site, he collected samples from the surface. He used pliers, a rake, and a shovel to pick up loose material and tried to break a large rock with a hammer.

In fact, this landform puzzled Sheng Tianhong. Over the past year, he had participated in monthly geological field trips and had gained some knowledge of the relevant topics, but he had never seen such a unique area before.

At the time, most extravehicular activity (EVA) training took place in the vast deserts of western Mars. Staff leveled half a square kilometer of desert with fine sand and deliberately placed boulders to simulate the Martian surface as observed by Country A. A replica of the MEM lunar lander's descent module was even built on-site, a model made of wood and paint. This module included a full-size Mars rover compartment that could be deployed and used like a real vehicle. Sheng Tianhong particularly appreciated this simulation training, driving a four-wheel-drive vehicle through the man-made, yet recognizable, Martian-featured desert...

But he really couldn't understand what had happened today. What did this broken-down golf cart having to do with the weird things waiting for them on Mars?

About half an hour later, he piled up the MET with his carefully selected, but ultimately worthless, samples. "Alright, Song Xingye, I think it's time to call it a day."

"Well done, Sheng Tianhong. They will train you to be a stone-hunting expert in the future, but I don't know much about the morphological research of your site yet."

He muttered, wiping the sweat from his brow with his dusty hands. "Go ahead and ask."

"Come on, Sheng Tianhong. Sampling isn't enough. You should understand this now: geologists really value the background. Tell me what you observed."

Sheng Tianhong started walking again, his backpack rubbing painfully against his shoulders. But as he looked around more systematically, he gradually discovered hidden patterns in the terrain. As his observation deepened, the discomfort gradually dissipated.

"I see that the landform here has mixed characteristics, with existing bedrock and sediments washed out, as if it were the traces left by flowing water."

"OK."

"This land is probably of limited value. It might be suitable as a light pasture, but the growing conditions are really poor, especially those rock walls. I suspect the rocks here are basalt, a type of volcanic rock. The macroscopic structure within the bedrock is mostly gullies, which run straight with almost no meandering. These gullies look like widened and deepened river valleys, perhaps eroded by glaciers? Huge ice tongues constantly flattened and deepened the valleys, scouring the water beneath the bedrock..."

"Don't make wild guesses, Sheng Tianhong. Those damn astronauts are always making wild guesses, leaving everyone confused. You just need to observe carefully."

"Of course, I found evidence that the passages matched, and that the high ground was isolated between the passages."

Back in Cels, Mira looked up suspiciously and asked, "Anastó, who?"

Turn the page, and you'll find yourself in another world.

Sheng Tianhong imagined Song Xingye's frustration upon hearing those words; Mira's relative backwardness in geology was not surprising. This woman was indeed under immense pressure, not only conducting field research in preparation for the final landing mission, but also dedicating herself to the Earth orbit mission scheduled for next month.

But Sheng Tianhong later realized that Mira was supposed to be the driving expert in charge of the landing mission.

"Anastomosis, you've definitely seen this in the 'Geology Coloring Book.' It refers to a geological structure where a waterway is broken off, and then a tributary forms and merges into another waterway. You see that waterway over there, first it branches, and then it merges again. And you can also see that plateau in the distance, separated by the newly formed waterway."

This isolated highland, like a rocky platform, stands alone in the middle of the plain.

"Yes, I understand. So what caused this data breach?"

"Sheng Tianhong..."

"Okay, okay, Song Xingye. Mira, stop asking these kinds of questions. I won't guess." However, glacial activity is also possible; it has to be glacial activity. Then what could possibly cause such massive damage to the landscape? Could it be lava flow?

"What other macroeconomic patterns are there?" Song Xingye asked.

Sheng Tianhong climbed onto a rock, his heavy backpack thumping on his back. He looked around, "More highlands, all carved out of sedimentary rock, they look..."

"What?"

"Smooth and streamlined." The sides of these islands are worn smooth, like the abandoned remains of a dried-up mother river. "I can see what look like gravel beaches, some perhaps twenty to thirty meters high, somewhat like sandbars. They seem to have formed after an outcrop, possibly an outcrop of loess or bedrock, shaped like a tail. There are longitudinal grooves carved into the rocks, which meander past the islands and gravel beaches."

He arrived at a bed made of loose clay and sand. "This should be mostly loess, I see..."

"What?"

"The wavy marks, these sediments solidified in the loess layer, should be considered small sand dunes. The dunes are clearly layered, looking like traces left by a dried-up river." He continued to examine the rocks closely. "The rock surface is covered with circular pits, a few centimeters deep, gradually widening from one meter, probably formed by scallop mounds." These pits were carved out of pebbles and eroded by wind and waves... "The whole area is like a miniature version of a dried-up riverbed," he explained. "That's right, it exhibits the topographical features of a dried-up riverbed, only magnified. River channels, sandbars, islands—all the landforms were sculpted by flowing water on a huge scale..."

He looked around with great curiosity, re-examining the geological formations with Song Xingye's unique perspective, seeing deep erosion gullies, massive layers of loess deposits, and isolated islands formed by erosion. "My God! Is this what you brought them here to see? Was the entire area formed by floods?"

"You're speculating again, Sheng Tianhong."

"Oh, come on, Song Xingye."

"Okay. You're right, Sheng Tianhong. At least, this is the most widely accepted hypothesis at present."

Mira abandoned the half-assembled CELSS and approached Sheng Tianhong instead. "What's wrong?"

Song Xingye pointed out: "During the Late Pleistocene, about 20,000 years ago, most of this area and the western part were covered by a huge lake, covering an area of ​​several thousand square kilometers. The lake was blocked by an ice dam, which later broke, triggering a catastrophic flood that swept across the region. The flood flow reached tens of millions of cubic yards per second, which is about a thousand times the flow of the Amazon River."

"That's so exaggerated," Sheng Tianhong said.

"Yes, the original riverbed could not withstand such a sudden volume of water and eventually breached its banks; the valley was widened and deepened, forming hundreds of interconnected waterways that even penetrated into the bedrock. Thousands of square kilometers of surface structure were eroded away down to the basalt bedrock, and another thousands of square kilometers were buried by riverbed sediments."

The bedrock has been eroded into hundreds of terraces, basins and canyons formed by cataracts, isolated peaks and highlands, and gravel dams as high as thirty or forty yards.

Shengtianhong, this place can be described as a "scarred land." There are very few regions on Earth where the impact of a large-scale catastrophic flood is so clearly visible.

Mira pushed her Snoopy hat back and scratched her blonde hair. "This is funny, Song Xingye, but I don't understand what this has to do with them."

"Okay, Sheng Tianhong, I've sent you another bag of photos. It's in the front left pocket of Mila's backpack."

Sheng Tianhong took a packet of black and white photos out of Mila's pocket, quickly flipped through them, and handed them to her.

These cratered plains, judging from the images, are clearly Martian terrain. But surprisingly, within this seemingly hard and ancient southern hemisphere landscape lies a deep ravine. Above this ravine are intricate interconnected channels, one of which contains a teardrop-shaped, streamlined island, sculpted like a pebble beach by water erosion. Even more striking is that the erosion marks downstream of the crater extend perfectly parallel to the island's outline...

Sheng Tianhong was still in disbelief at what he was seeing and hearing. "You mean there was such a catastrophic flood on Mars?"

Song Xingye hesitated for a moment, "I agree with that view. Ever since Mariner sent back the photos, many of them have been debating this. In my opinion, the similarity between the nodule-like landforms on Earth and the terrain of Mars is too striking to be a coincidence."

"But not everyone agrees with this view..." Sheng Tianhong said.

“No,” he admitted, “some people think that the ‘nodule’ features on Mars are too large to be formed by water, such as Shum from Country A.”

"Who?" Mira asked.

"Shum points out that the grooves and channels on Mars must have been formed by surface tension, and these cracks may have been altered later by volcanic activity and wind."

"This guy is really ridiculous," Sheng Tianhong said while looking at the photo, "but I support you, Song Xingye."

"But if these Martian gullies were formed by floods," Mira said, "where did the water come from and where did it go?"

"I bet he has his own opinion on this too," Sheng Tianhong murmured.

"I haven't received it, EV1."

"Please do it, Song Xingye."

"The aquifer is about 16 kilometers deep, beneath which lies solid bedrock, and above it is a thick ice cap in the topsoil. The mechanism that caused the uplift of the Tharsis region is likely mantle convection, which would inevitably trigger fault activity that leads to flooding. The water pressure must exceed the rock pressure. As soon as a crack appears in the lower layer of the ice cap, high-pressure water will gush to the surface."

"My God," Sheng Tianhong exclaimed, "the ocean buried deep within Martian rocks, Song Xingye, how will they know you're right?"