NIP Chapter 267 Deep Space Voyage
Chapter 267 Deep Space Voyage
Six months after the Mars mission was completed, the Europa lander was officially named "Lone Ranger." This name was chosen by Shen Yiming. When naming it, he said something along the lines of: "It will have to walk alone in the ice for four months, without signal, without human help. Whether it deserves this name depends on whether it can find its way out."
In addition to the "402" marking, the rocket also bears the logos of NASA, the European Space Agency, and Japan's JAXA. This is the first rocket in human spaceflight history to simultaneously display the logos of four organizations. At the Hainan launch site, on the same launch pad, in the same early morning, the Cangqiong-3 deep-space version once again stood under the searchlights, liquid hydrogen vapor slowly rising from its 62-meter-long body in the morning light.
This time is different.
This time, its upper stage will carry the probe to Mars first, then use Mars' gravitational slingshot effect to launch it towards Jupiter. The trajectory will be curved twice, covering a distance of over one billion kilometers. The launch window is only forty minutes long. Miss it, and you'll have to wait another twenty-six months.
Two hours before launch, a sudden downpour hit Hainan. Within ten minutes, the rain intensified from a drizzle to a torrential downpour. The Cangqiong-3 satellite on the launch pad was barely visible through the rain. Everyone in the control room turned their attention to the weather radar. A red precipitation cloud was moving towards them from the South China Sea, three times faster than previously predicted.
Chen Hao stood up. "Can I stop at the window?"
"The rainstorm will stop twenty minutes before the launch window," the weather team's voice came through the loudspeaker. The voice was steady, but there was an extra pause. "Eighty-five percent probability."
Zuo Cheng glanced at the radar image. The trailing edge of the red cloud was rapidly thinning. He had done some math: what did a twenty-six-month wait mean? It meant the Sentinel's countdown had gone on for another two years. It meant the Europa node had slept under the ice for another two years. It meant the entire solar system network had waited for humanity for another two years.
"As planned."
The countdown continued. The downpour stopped precisely twelve minutes into the countdown. The clouds above the launch pad seemed to have been parted by a hand. Water droplets slid down the rocket in strings, glistening in the reappearing sunlight.
ignition.
On its fourth flight, the Cangqiong-3 probe achieved full system stability. First-stage separation, second-stage ignition, and upper-stage in-orbit startup were completed. The nuclear thermal engine emitted a pale blue plume for the third time in space. Seven hundred and twenty seconds later, the upper-stage shut down. The probe entered a Mars-assisted orbit with precisely matched increments. It is expected to arrive at Jupiter in three years and two months.
Unlike the Mars mission, there was no cheering in the control room after the signal was confirmed. This time it was much quieter. Someone clapped, then the applause stopped on its own. It wasn't that they weren't excited. It was that everyone knew the significance of this voyage was different. Mars was a farewell mission. Europa was a knock on a door. A farewell mission was 400 million kilometers. A knock on a door was 1 billion kilometers.
The probe carried a recorded greeting from all of humanity. Written using the etched codes of the Founding Civilization, it was stored in the NX-40 radiation-resistant chip. This chip was a version redesigned and packaged by Fang Ze over six months, and underwent equivalent testing in the Jupiter radiation belt environment. It can survive for at least ten years in radiation doses ten times the lethal level.
The recordings were made by ordinary people from over one hundred countries around the world. A Brazilian girl spoke a sentence in Portuguese. An elderly Kenyan man spoke the same sentence into the recording equipment on the equatorial plateau. A fisherman in Hokkaido, Japan, recorded a sentence in the snow. An Indian teacher led his entire class in shouting the same sentence in a crowded classroom. An Egyptian archaeologist recorded it in front of the pyramids. An Icelandic mother recorded it while holding her newborn child. All of them spoke the same sentence in their native languages.
We're here.
One hundred countries, one hundred languages. In short.
Zuo Cheng also recorded a message. This recording wasn't included in the publicly available greeting chip. He recorded it himself, and only he could hear it. The office door was closed when he recorded it, and outside the window was the Hangzhou night sky at four in the morning. The satellites of the celestial constellation were passing overhead one after another. He placed the NX-40 recording module on the table and remained silent for a long time. Then he said three sentences.
"My name is Zuo Cheng. I came here carrying memories from two different timelines. I don't know if I'll still be a complete person before I press the buttons you left behind."
He paused. He tapped his fingers three times on the table.
"But if you can hear this, please tell me who pressed my restart button."
He installed the recording module into a separate memory device and attached a plain white label to it. Then he handed it to Yu Ying.
"If I'm gone someday," he said, "put this in."
Yu Ying didn't ask what was recorded inside. She took the memory card and placed it in the safe at the deepest part of the research institute. Only she and Zuo Cheng knew the safe's combination. Inside, besides the memory card, were Chen Xinghe's seven diaries.
After the successful launch, a large screen was added to the tracking and control center. The screen displayed only four numbers: three, zero, zero, zero. Three thousand Earth days remained until the Maverick spacecraft reached Jupiter.
Zuo Cheng stood in front of the screen for a long time.
Three thousand days. Before today, he had never waited three thousand days. Starting from a small incubator in Hangzhou, he transformed a five-person studio into a top-three global tech company in five years. The timelines for everything he did kept getting shorter and shorter. A satellite, from design to orbit, took a few months. A deep-space rocket, from blueprints to launch, took two months. A Mars probe, from its return from the Sahara to ignition, took sixty-one days. But now he had to wait three thousand days. In those three thousand days, there was only one thing he could do.
Ensure that the Maverick survives in space.
Make sure it flies through a billion kilometers of darkness, crosses Mars' gravitational field, traverses the asteroid belt, and plunges into Jupiter's radiation storms. Make sure it dives alone for four months in a 20-kilometer layer of ice, knocking on the door for all humanity in a place where no human can see it.
Three thousand days. The signal from the telemetry and control center changed from refreshing every second to every ten seconds, every minute, every hour. The Maverick spacecraft flew further and further away in space, gradually becoming a point of light, and then that point of light disappeared. Its antenna was still sending telemetry data towards Earth, but by the time that data reached Hangzhou, it was already past information. Thirty-three minutes passed. Three thousand days later, it will emerge from under the ice with a new signal.
It won't bring back data.
It was a reply a civilization had waited four billion years for. Zuo Cheng took one last look at the screen, then turned and walked out of the control center. He stopped by the window at the end of the corridor. The night sky was clear, and the satellites of the celestial constellations were passing overhead one after another, like a slowly moving diamond necklace. Three years and two months. He had done that arithmetic problem. More than 1,100 Earth days. Enough for a lot to happen. Enough for him to prepare for whatever might be hidden in the ocean beneath the ice of Europe.