The rise of nanometers

After 65 hours of flight, during which the Queqiao maneuvered its orbit three times and accelerated twice, it finally arrived near the apogee of its second lap.

At this time, Queqiao is about 128,000 kilometers away from Blue Star and about 246,000 kilometers away from the moon.

The gravitational slingshot effect of Blue Star began to act on the Queqiao. The effect of the gravitational slingshot was not like a slingshot, but like a sling.

The gravity of the planet pulls the spacecraft to rotate at high speed. When it reaches the critical point, the spacecraft only needs to accelerate slightly to break away from the shackles of gravity. At the same time, it uses this centrifugal speed to accelerate towards the vast universe.

This is how Queqiao was thrown out by the Blue Star's gravity and flew in the calculated direction, that is, the direction of the moon's orbit.

In the cockpit of the spacecraft, Yang Liming looked at various data and exchanged opinions with Ye Yadong and Zhang Feng from time to time.

Through the window above the cockpit, you can only see a dark starry sky. The pictures of the universe we often see are colorful stars in the sky.

But in fact, if you really stand in a vacuum and look at the vast sea of ​​​​stars, apart from the dazzling big fireball, you can rarely see many stars.

This is actually because there are not a large number of gas particles in the vacuum environment of the universe, so light diffraction does not occur, and the human eye can only observe visible light, and other electromagnetic waves and light waves cannot be seen.

The starry sky pictures in daily books are artificially synthesized pictures formed by using various scientific instruments such as infrared telescopes and then processed and rendered by computers.

Flying silently towards the moon in the pitch-black universe, Queqiao seemed somewhat alone.

Exploring this unknown vast universe always requires some warriors who can endure loneliness and overcome obstacles for mankind to advance to interstellar civilization.

The high-speed flying Queqiao, with the blessing of the gravity slingshot, accelerated its engine again, reaching a speed of 10.5 kilometers per second.

Although the route has some oblique angles, Queqiao needs to fly about 280,000 kilometers to enter the moon's intersection orbit.

However, this distance is only about 7 hours and 24 minutes for the Queqiao, which has a speed of 10.5 kilometers per second.

"Report, everything is normal on the forward route."

"Report, the connection with the Moon Moon Satellite has been completed."

Yang Liming nodded: "Enter autopilot. Zhang Feng, you go and rest first."

Zhang Feng checked the area he was responsible for and asked the captain to check again. After confirming that everything was correct, he swam towards the living cabin.

In daily work, cross-checking each other's operating equipment is also one of the lessons learned from the aviation industry.

Many mistakes often come from negligence. In such an isolated and helpless deep space, there is no room for carelessness.

The Wangyue satellites mentioned by Zhang Feng just now are four specially-made satellites. They are Wangyue 1 - communication relay satellite, Wangyue 2 - communication relay satellite, Wangyue 3 - navigation satellite, and Wangyue 4 - navigation satellite.

These four moon-gazing satellites are located at the Lagrange point L1 of the Blue Star and the Moon. Specifically, they are in the halo orbit of the Lagrange point L1 of the Blue Moon.

The Lagrange point L1 is a relatively fixed dynamic equilibrium point, which is at the balance point of the gravitational pull between the Blue Star and the Moon. It is about 320,000 kilometers away from the Blue Star and about 65,000 kilometers away from the Moon.

As for the role of the moon-watching satellite.

As the name implies, the two communication relay satellites are responsible for communication between Blue Star and the moon, while the two navigation satellites assist navigation between Blue Star and the moon.

These four satellites were just launched in March this year, with the purpose of assisting the establishment of lunar space stations and lunar surface bases.

While cruising at a constant speed, Yang Liming took the time to contact the ground command center again and reported some situations.

In the blink of an eye, six hours and fifty minutes passed, and there were only 34 minutes left to reach the rendezvous point of the lunar orbit.

Zhang Feng, who had rested for more than six hours, was awakened by the alarm clock. He picked up mouthwash to clean his mouth, wiped his face with a special wet wipe, and then returned to the cockpit.

At this time, the spacecraft began to brake and slow down. The three of them calmly controlled the Queqiao. Eighty minutes later, they successfully reached the rendezvous point.

"Start changing course."

"receive."

It took about five minutes for Queqiao to complete the maneuvering orbit change, successfully enter the lunar orbit, and then begin orbiting the moon.

According to the original plan, Queqiao will circle the lunar orbit for 2.7 times and finally stay on the lunar equatorial plane orbit 310 to 320 kilometers away from the lunar surface.

The reason why it operates in such a low orbit is mainly because the moon's gravity is relatively weak. This operating altitude can already meet the normal orbit of the space station.

After more than ten hours of orbit changes, the flight orbit of Queqiao was finally maintained on the lunar equatorial plane orbit of 313 to 318 kilometers. Queqiao took an average of 186 minutes to circle the moon.

After arriving at the designated orbital area, team leader Yang Liming began to divide the work: "Yadong, it's your turn to rest. Leave other work to us."

"clear."

After cross-checking the equipment, Ye Yadong went to the living cabin to rest.

Yang Liming and Zhang Feng are busy in an orderly manner. Don't think that they can sit back and relax once they reach the lunar orbit.

In fact, after arriving in lunar orbit, the real test has just begun.

The moon does not have a strong natural protective magnetic field, causing solar storms and cosmic rays to penetrate.

The reason why humans have not built a synchronous orbiting space station or a lunar space station is because these areas are easily disturbed or even destroyed by solar storms without the protection of the strong magnetic field of Blue Star.

In order to ensure safety, the Queqiao began to transform from an "I"-shaped distribution to an "L"-shaped distribution.

Then, two round special space capsules were assembled on both sides through the robotic arm. The space capsule is a strong magnetic field protection capsule and can be turned into a small strong magnetic field, that is, a Faraday cage.

The magnetic field protection cabins do not use solar energy, but use carbon-14 nuclear decay batteries, each equipped with 420 kilograms of carbon-14 nuclear decay batteries.

It can supply stable and high-density electric energy to the superconducting magnetic field generator. This small strong magnetic field can protect an elliptical area with a radius of about 160 meters and resist most solar storms, especially those charged particles that are easily deflected away. .

Of course, this is not enough. In order to enhance safety, other power sources in the Toad Palace space station can mobilize a large part of them as energy sources for the magnetic field generator when necessary.

The magnetic field generator itself is also designed with a margin for overclocking. After all, the spacecraft has a triple redundancy design. As long as the energy supply can keep up, the magnetic field strength of the magnetic field generator can be increased by up to 4.5 times.

After assembling the magnetic field protection cabin, Yang Liming tested the effect of the strong magnetic field preservation layer and found that there was no problem.

They began to lay out solar panels again and assembled other space capsules one after another.

The first-stage Toad Palace space station currently weighs 117.3 tons. It currently carries 3 unlaunched satellites of 8.4 tons, and about 32 tons of remaining surplus fuel.

Subtracting the weight of excess fuel and satellites, the real weight of the Toad Palace Space Station is 76.9 tons, including the Queqiao spacecraft, core module, docking module, and supply module.

As well as two strong magnetic field protection cabins and a backup energy cabin that were assembled after coming to the moon.

There are a total of 6 cabins and 1 ship, so many space capsules can be deployed. The main body benefits from the improvement of material technology, which improves the overall performance of the space capsule by about 160% than before, while the weight is reduced by about 57%.

There are only two small cabins in the Queqiao spacecraft, namely the cockpit and the living cabin.

In fact, the role of the Queqiao spacecraft is not only to bring the first part of the Toad Palace space station to the moon, but also for emergency escape.

Once there is a problem with the Toad Palace Space Station, astronauts can return to Blue Star via the Queqiao spacecraft, or to the Tiangong Space Station, or to the Guanghan Palace Base used to rescue the lunar surface.

It took more than a week of busy work to complete the layout of the initial space capsule and equipment of the Toad Palace Space Station.

Yang Liming drifted through the narrow living cabin and entered the core cabin. This is the real core of the Toad Palace Space Station. The space station's computers, control systems, etc. are all in this cabin.

Unlike the messy interior of the International Space Station, the Toad Palace Space Station and the Tiangong Space Station are of the same origin, with a square and square internal layout.

He came to the core cabin computer module, pulled out the hidden keyboard, and entered a series of instructions.

Zhang Feng's voice sounded in the earphones: "Captain, the bearing calculation is completed."

"Copy that, Huanluo-1 is launched."

Behind the supply bay of the space station, a satellite was ejected.

There are three moon-circling satellites, which are used in the field of communication relay. After all, the Toad Palace Space Station has to fly around the moon, and the moon is tidally locked by the Blue Star. The front side always faces the Blue Star, but the back side is unknown.

If there is no relay satellite, once the Toad Palace space station moves to the back of the moon, the communication connection between the Toad Palace space station and the Blue Star direction will be lost due to the obstruction of the moon.

Therefore, the deployment of communication relay satellites has become an indispensable solution at present.

The orbits of the three lunar satellites are about 1,360 to 1,830 kilometers from the lunar surface. Together with the communication satellite at the Galerangian point L1, they are enough to ensure that the Toad Palace Space Station and the future Guanghan Palace base maintain uninterrupted communications with Blue Star. .

After arranging the lunar satellite, Yang Liming returned to the cockpit.

Through the space station's ultra-high-definition camera, he and Zhang Feng clearly saw the back of the moon. For more than a week, they had been able to see this lonely world for half of every day.

There are more craters on the back of the moon, and it is precisely because of the existence of this natural satellite that it blocks a large part of the meteorites from Blue Star.

They finally had time to cooperate with the ground command center to carry out some lunar scientific research projects.

the other side.

The Queqiao-2 spacecraft was also ready. After the last inspection, captain Nie Changfeng and team member Shi Keji piloted the spacecraft to start a large elliptical orbit flight, preparing to rush to the lunar orbit.

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