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

Lin Ju stayed in the command center of the space agency for three consecutive days, and also witnessed how the more than two-ton Mars rover frantically explored the Zero Plain.

The Firefly 1 Mars rover basically ran according to the predetermined program, and carried out exploration around the positioning center under the control of AI. With the efficiency of Firefly 1, it can carefully survey an area of ​​about 20 square kilometers every day.

If calculated according to the 10-kilometer radius of the positioning point, the surface can be completely covered in about half a month, and in fact, about a month is enough.

Lin Ju believes that the positioning point error given by the system will not be too large. When the three probes arrive one after another, they will definitely be able to check the suspicious area inside and out.

If no abnormality is found on the surface, use drilling equipment to drill the area for exploration. Since it can be determined that there is something here, flaws can always be found.

According to the analysis of experts, the only possibility is that it is hidden underground. Even if it is too deep to be excavated, there is a way to map it:

The Zhurong spacecraft carries an armed satellite equipped with many tungsten metal rods, which can be released from the orbit of Mars to impact the ground.

By comparing the shock waves after the impact with the known general geological structure, as long as discontinuities or abnormalities are found, the location can basically be locked.

Three months, three months. If there is no discovery in three months with accurate positioning coordinates, it is either that the complexity of the situation is much greater than expected, or that the data is wrong, and human imagination cannot detect it.

After all, it is a planet tens of millions of kilometers away. If the power of alien civilization is strong enough, it is impossible for satellites and detectors to find nothing. At that time, we can only prepare for the landing of astronauts.

Within 72 hours after landing, Firefly 1 focused on the core area of ​​Plain Zero, and carried out soil, geomagnetic, and even gravity monitoring at a very high density, but ultimately found nothing.

On the last night of Lin Ju's stay, when Lin Ju was about to return home at 22 o'clock, Firefly 1 sent back the survey data again, but an accident occurred.

The signal suddenly became extremely unstable, the signal strength of the northwest telemetry network dropped significantly, and the signal was soon lost, followed by the southern monitoring network, and soon even the offshore remote monitoring ship sent abnormal reports.

In almost a minute, multiple monitoring stations were strongly interfered with one after another.

A small-scale riot immediately broke out in the entire control room. The staff had never encountered such a situation before, and they had already reacted and began to investigate according to the emergency procedures.

Shen Zuozhou, who had been with Lin Ju, woke up instantly and rushed to the monitor to check the situation.

Lin Ju did not dare to neglect it, and instantly thought of many possibilities.

"What's the situation!"

Shen Zuozhou shouted to the operator, who quickly replied:

"The signal strength is rapidly decreasing, no, even the signal can't be found, maybe the antenna is deviated..."

"How could it be!"

Mars is now hundreds of millions of kilometers away from the earth. The signal needs to be strengthened by the high-gain antenna of "Lihuo", and then the antenna is firmly locked to the direction of the earth under the action of the ultra-high precision gyroscope. If it deviates a little bit, it will indeed deviate to an unknown place.

But Shen Zuozhou keenly noticed that something was wrong. If it was the antenna deviation, the signal would be interrupted directly after a flash, but this time it was obviously not the case.

Did an alien civilization intervene and interfere with the signal transmission? Did Firefly 1 discover something?

The staff in the control room were still desperately urging each monitoring station, but they found that even the satellite communication signal had problems and could not issue commands smoothly.

It has been three or four minutes since the situation occurred. The control room has almost lost contact with all satellites. Only a few are still working, but they are also very unstable.

Shen Zuozhou's brain is working rapidly, and he is even ready to call his superiors and sound the alarm at any time.

He first asked the control room to check the receiving equipment, starting with the ground where the problem is most likely to occur, and commanded the staff to switch to the backup system, but still to no avail.

After several attempts, the monitoring network has not responded yet. Shen Zuozhou has realized the seriousness of the matter.

"Recovered!"

The staff suddenly shouted in surprise. After the signal was intermittently interfered for nearly ten minutes, the Northwest Monitoring Network, which was the first to be interfered, returned to normal.

The other monitoring stations are still the same, but the Northwest Monitoring Station has continued to transmit, still as stable as before, but the content of the interfered part has been lost.

Shen Zuozhou hurriedly picked up the landline receiver and prepared to ask several monitoring stations about the situation, but the phone rang first and he answered it subconsciously:

"Hello?"

"This is the Ministry of National Defense! Just now, there was a sudden strong electromagnetic interference over our country, and the signals of many satellites were disordered and cut off. At the same time, a giant unknown celestial body was detected in the low-Earth orbit!

We are already conducting an emergency investigation. Please take Lin Ju and move immediately to a safe area! I repeat, the interference still exists, and anything can happen!"

The phone was not loud, and Lin Ju, who was standing aside, could not hear it clearly. Looking at Shen Zuozhou's stunned expression, he asked:

"What's wrong, what's the situation?"

Shen Zuozhou was still standing there digesting the information on the other end of the phone. After he reacted, he immediately felt a chill. He dragged Lin Ju out without explaining.

"Hurry, let's go to the basement, the army will be here soon!"

Lin Ju didn't break free from him, and had to be forcibly dragged out. He also thought of a possibility in his mind. He quickly took out his mobile phone and saw that he received an encrypted warning message. He immediately put it back and continued to go to the safe area.

…

NACA, Robert has not experienced such a panic situation for a long time. Even when Artemis 2 lost contact, he never panicked like this.

Originally, he had received news from the Chinese people and was preparing to go on a trip with a large number of NACA executives, but he suddenly received an emergency notice.

Now the headquarters is full of employees running around. He has never heard the ringing of several phones in the office. He even faintly heard the sound of a helicopter outside.

- It's not the end of the world, but it's close.

"Yes, I'm Robert, we're investigating! Quick, give us a few more minutes!"

After spitting out a series of words like a machine gun, Robert had just hung up the phone when a group of ferocious soldiers rushed into his office like a violent wind, and then McMaster appeared in front of him in disheveled clothes, almost roaring:

"Stop that damn thing. If this continues, a world war will break out! The Chinese have issued an emergency mobilization order, and all their warships have begun preparing to leave the port!"

Twenty minutes ago, McMaster, who had just entered the office to drink coffee and enjoy desserts, suddenly heard a loud noise, and the office door was directly knocked open by a rough-looking Marine. He was dragged to the roof without any explanation. The "Doomsday Helicopter".

In the Presidential Palace and the Hexagon Building, there are helicopters specially prepared for the highest emergencies. The crews are on standby and can transfer important personnel in the shortest possible time.

However, according to its setting conditions, everyone calls it the "Doomsday Helicopter" because it can only be used in a nuclear war.

Wrapped up by the large and powerful soldiers, with barely touching the ground, McMaster felt as if he had teleported into the helicopter that had already started. Then the intelligence officer who got on the helicopter first reported the situation to him:

"The Chinese have just sent us four urgent hotline calls in a row, asking us whether we are carrying out large-scale electromagnetic interference in their territory, and saying that they are ready to deal with all emergencies.

We are still verifying the situation, but the Far East has already sent a warning. They have just detected a large number of secret messages sent from inland long-wave radio stations, and initially judged that the targets are nuclear submarines and warships.

At the same time, multiple radar stations discovered that they began to mobilize aircraft on a large scale. The electromagnetic signals were unprecedentedly dense. It was most likely an emergency mobilization order! "

McMaster, who understood the situation, suddenly saw a large number of dead souls, and there was massive electromagnetic interference in the territory? Or is it electromagnetic interference that forces the Chinese to send out emergency calls and start mobilizing the army?

He could guarantee that the Hexagon had never planned any similar action. He had no time to care about the inside story and hurriedly responded to the intelligence officer:

"Reply them immediately, we are not taking any action and have no intention of starting a war!

In addition, figure out what electromagnetic interference is going on, and mobilize the Far East Garrison and Pacific Fleet immediately! "

Intelligence officer: "Our operator has already responded, and the Far East has automatically entered a state of emergency..."

His words were suddenly interrupted by the ringing of the satellite phone, and after the call was connected, there was a series of messages:

Not only the Chinese, Lucia also sent questions through the emergency hotline, and also claimed to have begun mobilization, saying that Lucia is not afraid of any challenge;

Authorities on the peninsula and island countries also called one after another to ask who started the war, indicating that satellite signals were paralyzed on a large scale and that they had entered a defensive state.

Only the Hexagon itself is still confused. It seems that something terrible has happened in the Western Pacific, and a war has even begun?

Just when McMaster was so anxious that he wanted to jump out of the helicopter, reliable news finally came:

The Intelligence Bureau has basically found the source of the chaos caused by NACA!

…

At about 9 o'clock Central Time, "Artemis", which has been operating in low-Earth orbit for more than ten days and has carefully tested various functions, will finally conduct its first reflective surface deployment test.

In the past, the ground has been constantly conducting precise inspections on the tens of thousands of large-scale node controllers that control nearly one million square meters. Otherwise, if a problem occurs, it will cause wrinkles on the reflective surface, which may lead to large-scale tearing. The tragedy of splitting.

They had carefully confirmed that there was no problem before this deployment, and the selected time was also very subtle: At this time, Artemis was just flying over the eastern hemisphere, close to the twilight line and about to enter the dark side, and would not be affected by sunlight.

However, when unfolded, the reflective surface will be pointed at the sun on the horizon, and the light pressure will be sensed through a window period of less than 10 minutes, and whether the emitting surface is warped and deformed can be accurately determined.

In the event of an accident, this small amount of sunlight will not cause too much orbital deviation. Artemis will automatically shrink the reflective surface on the dark side to control the accident within a certain range.

Everything went smoothly, Artemis started very smoothly and did not receive any error signals.

However, just a minute later, Artemis suddenly displayed an abnormality in the attitude system. The external input signal was too large and it automatically entered the protection program.

Of course the ground understands the meaning of this message. Artemis has two attitude adjustment systems, one is a small rocket engine and conventional gas RCS thruster, and the other is an ion thruster and a micro gas RCS system.

The first system is used in the contracted state, to raise the orbit or adjust the attitude in a wide range. When Artemis is unfolded, the huge reflective surface is quite fragile. Once the 0.0045mm stretched aluminum foil is unevenly stressed, it will be light. Otherwise, it will be deformed and wrinkled, and in severe cases, it will be directly torn.

At this time, only ion thrusters with extremely gentle thrust, that is, electric thrusters, can be used. There are multiple such ion thrusters distributed on the memory alloy skeleton nodes of the entire Artemis, which can be adjusted on the reflective surface quite gently.

If an accident occurs on the reflective surface, the second attitude system can no longer cope with the force of light pressure, and it will simply shut down automatically to protect the fragile reflective surface, and the first attitude adjustment system will not be activated.

This is what is happening now. Artemis finds that the load brought by the light pressure is too strong, and the computer triggers an alarm to execute the protection program to avoid secondary accidents.

This also means that Artemis will be completely out of control, allowing the attitude to change freely, and will not try to shrink back to the normal until the external interference decreases.

The entire Artemis team did not expect this situation at all, and was immediately dumbfounded and prepared to get more information.

However, the signal began to become unstable and intermittent, and neither the ground monitoring station nor the satellite could receive a stable signal, and the connection was almost completely cut off.

At this time, they didn't know what was causing it, but that was Artemis, who was worth more than the same weight of gold, and hurried to report to Robert who was about to come over to see the situation.

The situation did not improve when Robert arrived. Just when everyone began to feel heavy-hearted and worried about NACA suffering unprecedented huge losses, emergency calls began to ring.

The Presidential Palace, the Pentagon, and the bigwigs at the docking station were all calling NACA frantically to ask what happened.

Robert's mind was in a mess at this time. He didn't understand what was going on at all. Then he saw an employee suddenly yelling and jumping up:

"It's over, Artemis is rolling!"

Everyone didn't realize what he was talking about at first, and heard him jump on the table impatiently to explain:

"The deployment process of Artemis is irreversible! Now the system to resist the solar light pressure is abnormally closed. Regardless of whether it is fully deployed, it will at least receive most of the light pressure, and rotate or even roll because of the uneven force without correction!

Gentlemen, it is a 250-acre super-emitting surface that can reflect sunlight and other electromagnetic waves. Its curved surface will focus and reflect all electromagnetic waves, including visible light, like a huge light bulb!"

All the technicians present understood what he meant instantly.

Light is also a kind of electromagnetic wave. Just like when a flashlight is pointed at a mirror, the light will be reflected and interfere with the environment. The electromagnetic signals near the low-Earth orbit will also be subject to similar interference and reflected by Artemis.

The area of ​​Artemis itself is of course a drop in the bucket compared to the Earth, but its reflection area is terribly large. After special optimization design, it will collect as much light as possible and project it onto the surface, with a maximum impact range of more than 300 kilometers!

If it is sunlight, it is better, but if it is a signal forwarded by a high-power communication satellite or spacecraft, it will be doomed if it is received by it:

The super-large curved surface is like an unprecedented high-gain antenna, which will super-amplify the received signal and twist the direction, further interfering with other surrounding signals.

This was considered in the early stages of Artemis' development, but at that time NACA believed that it was operating at a synchronous orbit altitude and would not cause too much interference to the low-Earth orbit from top to bottom. It could even consider using this to develop a low-cost broadcast network, but it had not yet figured out how to use it.

However, in low-Earth orbit, this characteristic becomes a disaster. Both civil and military satellites have extremely dense communications at this altitude. The power of Artemis is extremely terrifying, and even if only a part of it is disturbed, the impact is huge.

Even though NACA initially believed that the 10-minute sunlight window would not cause too much accident, Artemis will continue to disrupt the electromagnetic environment of low-Earth orbit until the attitude adjustment system is down, like a big light bulb in the dark night.

And when it starts to roll uncontrollably, its loss of contact becomes understandable: the high-orbit satellite and the ground antenna can no longer align its antenna!

This is a terrible vicious cycle. In addition to hoping that Artemis will recover by itself in the end, the only way to break the situation is to shoot it down with a missile!

Robert can fully imagine the current situation. Artemis is likely to cause serious interference to military satellites in low orbit in the Eastern Hemisphere, and even affect civilian satellites on a large scale. For countries in those places, this situation is basically the prelude to the imagined nuclear war.

First, electromagnetic interference destroys satellites, and the next step is missiles?

If their early warning system was not blind and deaf, it would immediately issue the highest warning and prepare for war!

So when Robert saw McMaster, he was even a little powerless, because NACA could not do anything at all!

He could only pray that the deterrence system established over half a century would be effective, and that the mutual trust between the parties would not be so bad that they could restrain their fear and take great risks not to shoot first.

As long as one party loses patience, it will be a chain reaction that can never be stopped!