Chapter 793: Falling!
In fact, Starlight arrived 79 hours earlier than Lu Zhou had expected.
After 41 days and 2 hours of flying, the fiery red planet gradually appeared in the view of the Starlight porthole.
Liu Biao squinted and looked outside the porthole. He watched as the bright sun slowly rose from the edge of the fiery red silhouette. He watched the billowing sand waves tumble like a sea of fire.
“This is a ss... But the scenery is quite pretty.”
“Yeah.” Xu Zhenghong nodded and pressed his helt. He said, “This is Starlight, we have entered Mars’ gravitational system. Successfully entered orbit a-1.”
They waited quietly for about five minutes.
A noisy unstable sound ca from Earth, which was tens of millions of kiloters away.
“This is the ground command center, congratulations on completing your mission... Please begin active braking procedures and prepare to approach Mars. Orbital navigation will be handled by the onboard computer. Good luck.”
“Roger that.”
Since they were tens of millions of kiloters away from Earth, the ground command center obviously couldn’t control the spacecraft in real ti.
The orbit change plan had already been coded in the spacecraft computer in advance. The pilot would complete the orbit change plan with the help of the onboard computer.
Of course, even though this sounded complicated, it was much easier in practice.
Starlight had a high degree of automation control. Unless an edge case happened, generally the pilot only needed to keep his eyes on the speed dial and make sure the spacecraft didn’t deviate from orbit.
Liu Biao: “Are we landing? Or are we waiting for them to co to us?”
Xu Zhenghong: “The New Virginia life support system has a return capsule. They will return to the BFS spacecraft using their return capsule. Then we will return to orbit.”
They would also drop their “spying space probe”.
Of course, this was a top-secret mission. This was personally arranged by Chief Designer Lu Zhou. Even Liu Biao wasn’t told about this mission.
Liu Biao: “Ok... What if they don’t co back?”
Xu Zhenghong said, “Then we’ll give them our thoughts and prayers... Rember to take photo evidence, make sure the Aricans don’t bla us.”
“No problems, I’ll start taking photos now!”
Liu Biao smiled and reached out to press a button on the console.
“Not yet.”
Xu Zhenghong smiled.
However, his face suddenly froze.
He looked at the silver-colored spacecraft outside the window. His pupils contracted. He placed his hand on his helt.
“This is Starlight... The Arican spacecraft seems to be in a little bit of trouble.”
Five minutes went by.
The command center voice ca through the communication channel.
“What’s happening?”
Xu Zhenghong squinted and stared at the silver spacecraft in the distance.
He didn’t know why, but he felt like sothing was wrong.
Liu Biao looked in the sa direction and turned on the ranging lidar, and he aid the lidar at the target spacecraft.
Even though this device was used to asure the distance of teorites, it could also be used to target spacecraft.
Xu Zhenghong looked at the velocity ter on the lidar and took a deep breath.
“BFS spacecraft is falling... I repeat, BFS spacecraft is falling!”
...
It had been more than a month since the distress signal was issued from Mars.
Accurately speaking, it had been 41 days and 2 hours.
Due to the lack of light and electricity, the crops in the planting area had withered.
In order to save energy, two weeks ago, they restricted their range of activities to the experint room and cut off power to all other areas. The reason for this was because the experint room contained the only control terminal that could receive and send data to the BFS spacecraft.
Even then, they were running low on resources.
They would die from hypoxia in the next 42 hours...
A trembling female voice broke the silence in the experint room.
“Are they going to save us?” Julia helplessly glanced outside the window with a look of despair.
There was no chance of hoping the sandstorm would stop.
It seed like the sandstorm would last for at least six months.
Johnson leaned on the window while holding a picture in his hand. He answered with a weak voice, “Definitely.”
Even though he answered enthusiastically, there wasn’t an ounce of optimism on his face.
“Maybe not,” Travis said. “Maybe they’d rather us die.”
Julia’s eyes widened, and she asked, “Why?”
Travis: “Think about it. If we die, we will die as heroes. If we live, they’ll have to give supplies and bring us ho... It’s a negative play for them.”
“Enough!”
Johnson suddenly growled.
The cabin went silent for a second.
Travis frowned and spoke with an unhappy tone.
“Hey, is there sothing wrong with what I said?”
Johnson stood up and looked at Travis.
“I just want you to shut your f*cking mouth, stop wasting oxygen.”
“What does that supposed to an? We’re going to die anyway. Oh, you want so of this? Co on, I’ve had enough of you.” Travis rubbed his hands and clenched his fists.
Julia saw that the two n were about to fight, so she used all of her energy to stand up and tried to stop them.
“Enough, calm down you two!”
Suddenly, they heard a muffled noise outside the life support system.
The two n stopped and looked outside the porthole.
Despite the heavy sandstorm, they could clearly see a ball of fire burning on the ground. At the sa ti, they saw a green dot flashing on the control terminal. Finally, the dot turned red.
A line of words flashed on the upper right corner of the control terminal.
[Connection lost.]
Johnson gulped. He looked horrified.
“Sh*t, our spacecraft!”
Travis quietly muttered, “Jesus Christ...”
The silence went on for a long ti.
The fire exhausted all of the remaining oxygen and was eventually swallowed by the sandstorm...
Julia looked outside the porthole and asked with a quivering voice, “Are we going to die?”
No one answered her.
The BFR spacecraft had enough fuel to float in orbit for twenty years, but sohow a “failure” occurred...
Johnson used his index finger to draw a cross on his chest.
God, please protect .
However, deep down, he knew that there was nothing God could do; this was the land of Ares...
Suddenly, the control terminal started to ring.
At first, he thought it was static noise, so he ignored it.
That was until the ringing beca clearer and clearer...
Johnson saw [Connection Request] on the terminal, so he quickly rushed over and pressed the button.
Could this be aliens?
He hoped he wasn’t imagining things.
It turned out it wasn’t his imagination.
The mont the communication channel was connected, a voice traveled through his ears...
“This is Chinese astronaut Xu Zhenghong, how are you doing, my Martian friends?”
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