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

Li Fengxian's question is actually not difficult to answer.

The reason it seems counterintuitive is because it's difficult for ordinary people to understand:

Why can humans see stars hundreds of millions of light-years away, yet be helpless against this iron lump right above their heads?

"But this isn't a case of being blind to one's own shortcomings. Because observing stars and tracking satellites involve two completely different sets of physical logic!"

Song Xingye picked up his teacup, took a sip of water, and explained to him.

"Stars are easy to find because they undergo nuclear fusion, making them huge, conspicuous sources of light. Moreover, on a cosmic scale, they are almost stationary relative to Earth; once the coordinates are determined, their positions remain unchanged for thousands of years."

"But satellites are different. They don't emit light themselves, only reflecting faint sunlight. And they are too close to the ground, speeding at nearly 7.9 km/s, the first cosmic velocity. Trying to catch them with a narrow-beam radar on the ground is as difficult as shooting a mosquito flying around in a dark room with a sniper rifle."

"So in most cases, distant stars are much easier to find than satellites that are right in front of you..."

After listening, Li Fengxian nodded as if he understood, and then said:

"Alright, I get it. We should switch shifts. You should go back and catch up on your sleep. You haven't slept a wink for a whole day and night, have you?"

"Um!"

Song Xingye responded, but didn't move from his seat. He picked up his notebook and said, "Wait a minute, finish calculating this."

"Ha, just keep toughing it out! You didn't take care of your health when you were young, you'll regret it when you're old!"

Li Fengxian kept rambling on, but his actions betrayed his true intentions. He picked up the cup and brewed him another cup of tea.

Back in his seat, he idly looked around for a while, then crossed his legs and stared blankly, muttering to himself:

"Sitting here like this is so boring. Are you just going to sit here all day?"

"It's alright, as long as I find something to do, the time will pass quickly."

"So, what have you gained from all that writing and drawing on paper?"

"No, there's too little useful information right now. We don't even have a starting point to find the Forbes number."

A moment later, Song Xingye made the final stroke.

Li Fengxian leaned closer, resting his chin on his hand, and clicked his tongue in amazement: "Your drawing skills are quite good. You can draw an ellipse so precisely without a ruler, it looks like it was printed."

"If you're bored out of your mind, I can tear out a couple of pages for you to practice sketching."

Song Xingye capped his pen, closed his notebook, and stood up. "I'm leaving. I'm going back to sleep."

……

After retrieving his phone from the signal jamming cabinet at the security checkpoint, Song Xingye tagged all members of the 【Graduation Thesis Task Force】 on his way back to the living area.

Ten minutes later.

Song Xingye sat cross-legged on his hard dormitory bed, talking on voice with Qin Rui and Chang Jian.

@Qin Rui: "No need for code words this time, Hoshino, so arrogant?"

@Song Xingye: "Before, we were afraid the Russians would cause trouble for no reason. Now that this has happened, they have no interest in dealing with us."

@Chang Jian: "Hoshino, what's going on? I heard the Jingzhou Flight Control Center is in complete chaos, even the space force personnel on leave have been recalled, and they're searching the world for a Mars rover?"

The members of the group, including @姜棉, @陈鑫, @赵悦荷, and @曹确, were all holding their breath and listening intently.

A short while later, @WangHan, who works in the Space Force, also hurriedly went online.

@Wang Han: "Hoshino, you were right! The Russians really messed up at the crucial moment, not only losing themselves but also dragging our Yinghuo-1 down with them!"

Song Xingye hummed in agreement. Now was not the time to discuss prophecy, but rather how to remedy the situation.

He succinctly recounted the cause and effect, and concluded:

"In short, the MDU engine's combustion time exceeded the preset limit due to the error correction program. Before any ground intervention could be made, it flew out of the radar range of the Argentine station."

"Nobody knows where those extra few seconds pushed it. And whether the navigation system was restored by the error correction protection mechanism during the flight from Argentina to Crimea, and how much it deviated from the course, are all unknowns."

After the words were spoken, the group chat fell silent, with only the slightly heavy breathing of the group members.

Song Xingye said seriously:

There are only two possibilities now.

"The first possibility is that the Phobos combination deviated from its intended angle due to excess ignition energy, accelerated into the atmosphere, and crashed, with the wreckage landing in some uninhabited sea area."

"Of course, this is the worst-case scenario, and we won't make any assumptions here. After all, it's a space asset worth 50 billion rubles; how can we just give it up like that?"

"The second possibility is that the Phobos assembly is still in orbit. However, due to an ignition deviation, it left its original orbit and did not enter its planned orbit, but instead entered a completely new, unknown, and abnormally elliptical orbit!"

He paused for a few seconds to give everyone time to process what he was saying.

Then the speaking speed increased:

"Because the orbit has changed, the tracking and control stations of R country and Dong country found nothing when they aimed their radar antennas at the predetermined positions as originally planned."

"If the number of orbital elements of this new trajectory cannot be determined immediately, the radar's narrow beam will never be able to accurately target it. It will be like a kite with a broken string, never receiving commands or sending back signals..."

Wang Han nodded in deep agreement: "So the situation is very tricky now, it's like looking for a needle in a haystack!"

Cao Que scratched his head and said:

"Based on the orbital elements before the disappearance, it's impossible to determine which elliptical orbits it might have entered; we can only guess."

Chang Jian said, "The Forbes spacecraft's orbit before it disappeared was 200 x 400 kilometers. If you were to unfold the surface of that sphere, it would be equivalent to finding a 1-square-meter pixel on a 590 million square kilometer screen—the probability is one in 5.9 trillion. It's incredibly difficult!"

"It is indeed very difficult, otherwise we wouldn't have called you all here to help."

Song Xingye explained, "The Forbes was originally going to enter a highly elliptical orbit of 200 x 4000 kilometers. Since the burn-up time has been extended, the apogee altitude should be over 4000 kilometers, so I'm making some arrangements for the mission."

Everyone listened attentively to the instructions.

"Dongyu Group, the space agency, and the Space Force are all busy looking for the Forbes. Nobody cares about our predictive models right now, so we can only fight this battle alone at this stage."

"Let's search slowly on our own, but we can't search aimlessly. We need to calculate the orbital elements of the new ellipse as accurately as possible..."

The orbital elements are equivalent to the coordinates of a spacecraft in space.

However, ground coordinates only require three variables: latitude, longitude, and altitude, while space positions require six variables—

Semi-major axis, eccentricity, inclination, right ascension of the ascending node, argument of perigee, and true anomaly.

To simplify, it refers to the position (x, y, z) and velocity (Vx, Vy, Vz) of a point in a Cartesian coordinate system.

Song Xingye said seriously:

"It's hard to say how long R country and Dong country can maintain their patience in searching for the Forbes; maybe a week or two, or a month or two."

"During this period, we need to use our methods as much as possible to acquire data and use integral equations to calculate all the future positions of the Forbes."

Next, Song Xingye began to select his generals:

"Wang Han, you're in the Space Force, you're in charge of waiting for the rabbit to run into the tree stump."

"During shifts, we predict coordinates based on our model and fire radar beams in different directions to create an 'electronic fence.' Even a blind cat can get lucky; if we succeed just once, we've made a profit!"

"Of course, it would be even better if you could convince more people to join in making the radar grating."

Then Song Xingye pointed to Chang Jian and Cao Que.

"Old Chang, you have a lot of friends. Try to find connections at the observatory and use optical occultation to search for the Phobos."

"Based on the coordinates predicted by the model, we specifically chose to observe with a telescope during the twilight period, when the sun's reflection is most obvious."

"Cao Que, you should ask your friends at the observatories in Europe to take a look too..."

Chang Jian and Cao Que both nodded, indicating that they would take care of it.

"Qin Rui, the prediction model is still your strong suit. Jiang Mian and Chen Xin, you two are in charge of algorithm optimization, focusing on electromagnetic wave filtering. Don't overlook even the slightest bit of noise in the sound."

Song Xingye assigned them the most difficult part, emphasizing the following instructions:

"Zhao Yuehe, shout it out in your radio enthusiast group, tell everyone to set up their antennas and help us find the Forbes!"