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

How to recover the lost Phobos probe as soon as possible has become a major concern for everyone.

Theoretically speaking, as long as the Forbes' solar panels can still generate electricity and its antennas are still functioning properly, it will not easily give up its surveillance.

But in reality, the true golden rescue time is only 48 hours.

However, time flew by, and two days later, late at night, the Baikonur Control Center was still shrouded in gloom.

Engineer Chen had just finished an emergency meeting with Chief Engineer Ji Ma and Director Andrei.

When he returned, he walked with heavy steps and rubbed his temples wearily.

Commander-in-Chief Zhang Jingshan immediately went to greet him: "Old Chen, what did the Russians say?"

"No chance! In the past two days, we've used all the idle radars in R country and Dong country, and tried dozens of forecast communication windows, but all to no avail."

Engineer Chen frowned, his thick eyebrows furrowing. "All redundant communication modes are unresponsive; trajectory prediction has completely failed. The management on the Russian side has essentially given up..."

"You're just admitting defeat like that?!"

Zhang Jingshan's eyes widened, and he said unwillingly, "That's a spacecraft worth 50 billion rubles! How can we just give up on it like that? Besides, it's only been 48 hours!"

On the periphery of the crowd, Song Xingye and Li Fengxian stood silently, without uttering a word.

Engineer Chen sighed. Although reluctant, he had to lay the harsh reality out in the open:

"Old Zhang, the purpose of this launch mission is to ensure that Phobos and Yinghuo 1 can make it to Mars opposition next year."

"The launch window for the Zenit rocket was chosen on November 9th, when the relative positions of Earth and Mars were optimal; this is what is known as the 'God's Window'."

"The original plan was for the MDU to first ignite to establish orbit, and then ignite again to enter the Mars transfer orbit. Who would have thought... that the very first step would backfire..."

Engineer Chen held up two fingers, his expression solemn. "The Forbes spacecraft can wait, but Mars won't. If the delay exceeds two days, the Earth-Mars orbit will diverge, and the fuel needed to catch up with Mars will increase exponentially!"

Upon hearing this, the light in Zhang Jingshan's eyes instantly dimmed.

He sighed. "That's true. The Phobos only carried two fuel tanks, with a 10% fuel reserve. Now that 48 hours have passed, even if it's recovered, it'll be difficult to get to Mars..."

The test team was filled with gloom and despair.

Unexpectedly, his first mission to explore Mars ended in failure, resulting in such a Waterloo.

I couldn't help but feel some regret and resentment.

Fortunately, the search for the Phobos probe has not been completely abandoned.

Country R and Country D are still mobilizing their space forces to conduct exploratory searches.

However, the mission level has been downgraded from "highest priority" to "background mission" and no longer occupies core radar resources.

And so, another week passed in silence and torment.

Meanwhile, Song Xingye and his secret team were also busy.

Extensive data analysis was conducted in the prediction model using methods such as waiting for a rabbit to run into a tree stump, optical occultation, and electromagnetic wave screening.

Although the predictive model was designed hastily, with Song Xingye, a physical genius, at the helm, along with Jiang Mian and Chen Xin, two mathematical geniuses, and Qin Rui, a computer whiz, it is still quite comprehensive overall.

With Song Xingye's "fault prediction eye," which can spot logical flaws, constantly correcting the formula, the entire model has become nearly perfect.

Song Xingye felt that all he was lacking now was a little bit of... luck!

Wang Han's team, taking advantage of the Space Force's shift breaks, attempted to adjust the antenna's pointing angle and launch radar beams into space at different time windows based on the coordinates of the prediction model.

This is called waiting for a rabbit to run into a tree stump, or a blind cat stumbling upon a dead mouse.

In short, if the model predicts that the Phobos probe will pass over the airspace above Wang Han's tracking and control station in Kashi at some point;

So he would fire a radar beam and keep a close watch on that point. As long as a metal object passed through the electronic fence, the radar beam would emit an echo.

This was the limit of what Wang Han could do within his authority.

However, luck, such a mysterious thing, doesn't come easily.

Ten days passed, and Wang Han still hadn't made any progress.

As for the other two fronts, there has been no progress so far.

Chang Jian and Cao Que mobilized all their connections, but their power was still limited.

Because the Space Force is also using the observatory's optical and radio telescopes to monitor several key orbital points around the clock.

Therefore, they can only occasionally borrow these devices at dawn and dusk.

Sometimes, there are even three consecutive days without a chance to access the equipment.

They only had more opportunities to use it after the Space Force gradually abandoned its emergency search for Phobos.

Even so, apart from the silent starry sky, no flashes of the Forbes' solar panels were captured in the footage this week.

As for Qin Rui, Jiang Mian, Chen Xin, and Zhao Yuehe's group, they didn't even have any gains.

Zhao Yuehe mobilized some amateur radio enthusiasts to set up homemade antennas and receivers to receive cosmic electromagnetic waves at specified times and coordinates.

Some folk shamans even hand-made a 3-meter-diameter pot in their own yards and scanned the entire sky with it.

In just a few days, the submission inbox was almost bursting, and the data packets downloaded from the transfer station reached a staggering ten TB!

This was an absolutely massive amount of data in 2011.

The faint distress signal from the Phobos may have been drowned out by the background noise of the universe.

Jiang Mian and Chen Xin upgraded their filtering algorithm version after version, but it still couldn't keep up with the speed of the data influx.

Often, before the old data has been fully analyzed, the email inbox receives even more new submissions from volunteers.

Everyone is extremely busy.

I was both physically and mentally exhausted, yet also incredibly invigorated.

It's as if everyone isn't looking for a lost probe, but rather using their wisdom and resilience to dig out a treasure worth 50 billion rubles hidden in the universe!

……

A full week has passed since the golden rescue period.

That morning, Mr. Chen returned home fuming and slammed his laptop onto the table with a loud thud.

"Those Russian bastards have absolutely no sense of responsibility, they're scoundrels!"

The members of the test team gathered around, asking questions all at once.

Zhang Jingshan raised his hand to signal for quiet and handed over a cup of hot tea.

Engineer Chen gulped down several mouthfuls, barely managing to suppress his anger, and gritted his teeth, saying:

"The Forbes spacecraft has been missing for almost ten days, and with each day it goes missing, the difficulty of getting to Mars increases exponentially."

"If we could have recovered last week, even if we missed the best window, we could have gritted our teeth and redesigned a slightly faster track to make up for the week we lost."

"But now... we haven't even seen a ghost!"

Zhang Jingshan tentatively asked, "So, the Russians are planning to lay all their cards on the table and declare the mission a failure?"

Song Xingye's heart skipped a beat.

I wondered if the Russians were really that impatient.

Announcing a disappearance to the public means giving up on eavesdropping.

That was made with a full 50 billion rubles of real gold and silver, and the Russians just threw it into space without batting an eye?

Unexpectedly, Engineer Chen's tone shifted, and he angrily said, "The Russians said the surveillance will continue, but even if we recover the Forbes, getting to Mars will be as difficult as climbing to heaven. So they proposed a plan—sacrifice the pawn to save the king!"

"Saving the pawn to save the king?"

The members of the test team looked at each other, momentarily stunned.

"The idea is to lighten the load on the Forbes, jettisoning unnecessary bulk so that there will be enough fuel."

Engineer Chen slammed his fist on the table, gritting his teeth, "The 'burden' they see is our Firefly No. 1! They want to blast Firefly away, isn't that just bullying us?"

After Chen's explanation, Song Xingye understood why the other party was so angry when they returned.

"This is outrageous!"

"You're treating us like a burden? Why didn't you say we were a burden when we were working together?"

"Exactly! The Forbes has so many spare parts, they wouldn't throw away a single one of their own, but they'd throw ours away instead?"

The test team was also excited, glaring angrily at the Russians, ready to roll up their sleeves and fight them to the death.

Commander Zhang quickly stood up, opened his arms to stop the excited team members, and then said to Engineer Chen:

"Even if you reduce our workload, you can't reduce it for us! This is a joint exploration operation under a signed agreement! Did you report this?"

Engineer Chen said irritably, "I reported it as soon as the meeting ended. Director Sun from the Space Agency is in urgent negotiations. I don't know what the outcome of the negotiations will be."

"That's good, that's good. Let's wait for news..."

……

The negotiations between Country R and the East Korea Space Agency regarding whether to abandon Firefly 1 have been deadlocked for half a month.

It wasn't until early December, after a flurry of activity, that the negotiations finally yielded results.

The outcome was not that Director Sun Liancheng won the debate with the group of scholars, but rather that the Russians completely forfeited—withdrew from the competition!

With the window for Mars' opposition drawing ever closer, the Phobos spacecraft, which has been missing for a month, has been physics-wise sentenced to death.

According to the Tsiolkovsky rocket equations, even if the throttle is floored, it is impossible to generate enough speed increments to enter the Earth-Mars transfer trajectory with the existing fuel.

Unless... the return capsule designed for sample return is also jettisoned.

Russia's Phobos spacecraft was specifically designed for Mars sample collection.

By jettisoning the return capsule, the Forbes would become useless scrap metal, which would be tantamount to suicide.

So the Russian shrugged and said: Destroy it, we're not looking anymore!

But Dongguo did not give up.

Director Sun Liancheng continued to negotiate with the Russians at the negotiating table.

However, the balance of power shifted, and the focus of the negotiations became persuading the Russians to abandon the return capsule and cut off and discard all useless robotic arms, external equipment, scientific cameras, and other components.

Ultimately, only the basic fuel tank, engine, onboard computer, and communication antenna were retained, allowing the Phobos spacecraft to be carried lightly to send the Yinghuo-1 spacecraft, the only one of its kind, to Mars!

Sun Liancheng's attitude was clear: since you've already thrown the Forbes away as scrap metal, you might as well put yourselves to good use and serve as a launch vehicle.

The fuel in the two external fuel tanks was enough to send the 13.5-ton Phobos spacecraft to Mars with great difficulty. Surely it couldn't tow the mere 115-kilogram Yinghuo-1?!

It is unclear what conditions were reached during the negotiations, or whether the Russians had come to terms with reality and ultimately agreed to the terms.

It also retained four tracking stations in Baikonur, Moskov, Crimea, and the Uzbek Plateau to continue assisting the East in its search for the Phobos.

So Dongguo took over the search for the Forbes.

As December arrived, temperatures in Baikonur grew colder day by day, plummeting to -20 degrees Celsius.

Even with all the gaps in the doors and windows sealed shut and the stove burning red-hot, Song Xingye, wrapped in a thick quilt, still felt a faint chill creeping into his bones.

That day, he listened to the report from the secret assault team as usual.

Chang Jian was a full half hour late.

Just as everyone was preparing to "criticize" him, his avatar suddenly started flashing wildly, followed by a voice message that exploded out, as if he had been injected with adrenaline:

"Hoshino! I have a friend at the Purple Mountain Observatory...it seems they've caught the tail of the Forbes!!!"