The Science Fiction World of Xueba

Pang Xuelin was wearing an EVA spacesuit, standing on the top of a small hill.

It is now noon, the sky of Mars presents a hazy yellow-brown color, the surface of Mars has a lot of hematite, and the color is reddish, this kind of light is reflected into the atmosphere, and there is a lot of dust in the atmosphere of Mars particles, so the Martian sky looks a bit closer to the color of dust storms on Earth.

But in the morning or evening, the Martian atmosphere will turn red or pink again. This is because the Martian atmosphere is more receptive to longer-wavelength infrared light, and there are particles in the atmosphere and reflections from the surface of Mars, so it will appear in such a color.

The rover was parked at the foot of the mountain to charge the battery, and Pang Xuelin climbed up the small hill on a whim to enjoy the beauty of the red planet.

Looking far away, you can see various beautiful streamlined hills located in the desert. Most of these hills are gentle and beautiful in shape, which is the result of hundreds of millions of years of ancient wind and sand.

After entering the world of "The Martian" for more than a month, Pang Xuelin was free to appreciate this desolate and lonely alien world for the first time.

In the past few days, Pang Xuelin sets off at dawn every day, washes and eats, checks the air composition in the car, checks the oxygen tank and replaces the carbon dioxide filter, and then drives for about three hours, finds a place to park, conducts an EVA, and turns off the solar energy in the car. The battery panels come out to charge the rover along with the solar panels on the roof.

After charging for about four hours, he charged the EVA again, put away the battery board, and then drove until dark, finding a place to stop and rest.

The life of long-distance travel is boring and full of rules.

After staying at the top of the hill for nearly half an hour, Pang Xuelin returned to the narrow rover with some boredom.

The interior space of the rover is not too big, food and equipment take up a lot of space, barely leaving a small bed for Pang Xuelin to lie on.

The heat provided by RTG is very powerful, which can basically keep the rover at a constant temperature of 25-30 degrees.

After taking off the bulky EVA spacesuit, Pang Xuelin can sleep in it wearing a T-shirt and big pants, wrapped in a blanket.

The life of a truck driver on this earth is not comfortable, and the most troublesome thing is how to deal with the excrement.

There is a toilet in the rover, but this toilet only has a sewage tank for emergency use, and it is not connected to the water circulation system in the vehicle.

So Pang Xuelin could only deal with the urine and defecation problem separately. The large size is relatively simple and can be solved in the toilet. The small size he specially prepared a bottle. After solving the problem, he poured the urine into the water circulation system, and then...

Forget it, let’s not talk about it, the author feels disgusting.

Only three days after leaving the habitat, Pang Xuelin already misses the life in the habitat.

In three days, Pang Xuelin crossed the Arsidalia Plain and entered the hilly area, but there was at least one to two days' travel before the destination. According to the map, after Pang Xuelin crossed the hills, he had to cross the Chris Plain and enter the Rhys Valley.

It's a delta of a flooded river bed, the landing zone for Mars Pathfinder.

But it is not easy to find the location of the Mars Pathfinder smoothly.

The navigation beacon of the habitat cabin is only 40 kilometers away. Although there is a relatively complete topographic map on the computer, Pang Xuelin found that he took it for granted when he wanted to rely on the landmarks for navigation.

Because of the landmarks on the map, he couldn't find them at all.

The compass is even more meaningless, because there is no magnetic field on Mars.

But Pang Xuelin has his own way. Phobos (Phobos), which rises from west to east and sets twice a day, is his best partner.

Although there is no way to use Phobos for precise navigation, it is possible to measure an approximate orientation.

This is also the reason why he was able to enter the Chris Plain smoothly all the way.

But after entering Chris Plain,

Pang Xuelin found that trouble was coming.

Overlooking this vast desert, there is a piece of dim flat land everywhere, and there is no reference point at all.

After driving more than ten kilometers or twenty kilometers, it feels like staying in the same place.

Referring to Phobos, Pang Xuelin drove in the Chris Plain for a day with some trepidation, but the expected Ares Valley never appeared.

Pang Xuelin wondered if he was driving in the wrong direction, and it was not until the morning of the fifth day that Pang Xuelin felt that his luck was turning.

Because he found an excellent reference - the Hamelin impact crater.

The impact crater, named after the town in the Piper's fairy tale, has a diameter of 10 kilometers, and its coordinates are 20.2 degrees north latitude and 32.8 degrees west longitude.

So Pang Xuelin knew that he was not far from Mars Pathfinder.

On the afternoon of the fifth day, Pang Xuelin drove the rover across the Chris Plain and entered Ares Valley.

The road began to become rough, and some rocks of different sizes appeared on the road from time to time. Fortunately, the chassis of the rover was high enough, and its off-road performance was quite good.

That night, Pang Xuelin parked the rover near a boulder as his camp, and had a very solid sleep.

On the morning of the sixth day, Pang Xuelin recovered his energy and began to search slowly in Ares Valley.

After a day of searching, Pang Xuelin finally found the landmark he was looking for - Twin Peaks.

Twin Peaks is a very famous photo taken by Mars Pathfinder. It consists of two hills very close together, and the landing site of Mars Pathfinder is exactly one kilometer west of Twin Peaks .

Pang Xuelin drove all the way, and finally found the Mars Pathfinder not far from the west side of Shuangfeng, which was tightly wrapped by airbags and half buried in sand.

"Finally found you!"

Pang Xuelin couldn't help but heaved a sigh of relief.

Before departure, he and Watney made an agreement that they would search the Ares Valley for a week at most, and if they couldn't find the Mars Pathfinder, they would return immediately.

Now, it only took him two days to find the target, which was extremely smooth.

The Mars Pathfinder is a tetrahedron wrapped by airbags. When it flies to Mars for a certain distance, the "Mars Pathfinder" spacecraft will start cruising and prepare to release the parachute. At an altitude of 5 to 11 kilometers above Mars, a huge parachute carrying an air bag opened and then floated down rapidly. At a height of 300 meters, the flying bag automatically inflates and inflates... Finally, it breaks away from the parachute and bounces to land on Mars. After the landing is completed, the airbag will deflate, exposing the Martian Pathfinder inside.

Mars Pathfinder consists of a landing module and a Sojourner rover. The landing module is immovable. The Sojourner rover can roam at a turtle speed of 2 feet per minute to detect the rock composition on Mars. It is the first Mars rover in human history, and it has played an extremely important role in the process of human exploration of Mars.

Pang Xuelin found the Sojourner rover, which had been shut down for nearly 40 years, 30 meters away from the landing module.

However, the most important communication equipment is still in the landing cabin. The landing module was too huge, and Pang Xuelin couldn't move it at all. He only needed to move the communication system and the Sojourner rover.

Why take the sojourner's Mars rover? The reason is simple. People on Earth want to contact the Mars Pathfinder, they can only send fixed commands, such as moving the rover back and forth, left and right. Such fixed commands are meaningless to Pang Xuelin.

He needs to convert this instruction into understandable text, so the Mars rover with a rotating camera has become the best choice.

At that time, he only needs to make the corresponding alphabet, and then use the rotatable camera of the Mars rover to have a conversation with the Ares project command.

Everything is going smooth.

Pang Xuelin tied the rover to the landing module with hinges, and then drove the rover to pull the landing module out from under the sand.

Then, he used various tools carried in the car to separate the main system of the landing module from the heaviest soft landing system.

Finally, he dropped the 10-kilogram Sojourner rover into the rover. He placed the main system of the landing module, which weighed nearly 100 kilograms, on the body of the rover.

Pang Xuelin is very fortunate that the gravitational acceleration of Mars is only half of that of Earth, otherwise he would not be able to do this job at all.