In fact, the thing called "Solar Capture and Reflection Tracking Device" is a mirror with signal tracking.

It can be seen from its structure that its function is to reflect sunlight and then track the lunar rover solar panels carrying beacons, allowing the lunar rover to obtain sunlight in the permanent shadow area.

This method was not original to the Navigator, nor was it thought of by Tianxia Space Administration. This method was found very early.

But it is the first time to use it on the moon.

The usage it planned before was more direct, not to recharge the lunar rover, but to "boil water".

There is ice in the shadow area of ​​the moon, which is almost a consensus. The rest is the question of how to land on the moon and how to find it.

These permanently shadowed craters at -249°C are the coldest places naturally formed in the solar system, and excavation equipment requires heat and energy to extract these and then convert them into fuel.

Because plutonium-based batteries based on natural decay heat production are too expensive for private companies, even for national team scientific research tasks, it is best to use the energy of the sun on the moon.

That thing is much cheaper.

A small town in Europa provided inspiration for this. More than a decade ago, people set up a giant mirror on a mountain to overlook the town. In the cloudy and cold central square in winter, it was shining with a bright spot.

Scientists hope that future lunar ice extractors can follow this action on the moon. The sunlight on the mountains can be folded directly into a pit to heat the ice and convert it into steam, and then the condensed water is transferred to the treatment plant. With the help of solar energy, it will be decomposed into hydrogen and oxygen, which will be stored for fuel or placed in fuel cells for energy.

However, this method is suitable for a well-built lunar base. If you use this method when there is nothing, it will only be a waste of water.

Another method is to make several more steps, which is that the detection truck can shovel up the soil with ice and put it in the furnace to heat it to release water. The furnace can be directly heated with high-energy laser, or it can be irradiated onto the solar panel first, and then converted into electrical energy for heating.

Someone has tested it in the laboratory, and the results are all feasible. How to achieve it on the moon needs to be verified specifically.

If large pieces of ice cannot be obtained, then there is another source of water on the moon, which is lunar soil, also known as surface rock cuttings.

The surface rock chips contain silicon and metal oxides, which on average contain 43% mass fraction of oxygen, which are everywhere on the moon.

Oxygen extracted from the soil can provide energy to bases that are far away from the polar regions, with scientific or economic value, and produce useful by-products such as rare metals.

The surface rock cuttings will not easily give out its "wealth", and release oxygen from chemical bonds is more energy-consuming than heating ice.

In theory, the reactor can use large mirrors to refract sunlight into a special reactor, heating the lunar soil to more than 900  °C until it shines.

At this temperature, hydrogen or carbon taken from the earth can peel oxygen from the minerals and combine with hydrogen to form water.

More than a decade ago, a scientist used tests to simulate the lunar surface cuttings in a laboratory to prove that this operation is feasible, but it did not test the low gravity and vacuum environment, so whether it can be used on the moon also needs to be verified on the spot.

Researchers hope to improve the technology and reduce the things that have to be taken from the earth.

An aerospace research team is developing a prototype that can work at low temperatures, which can recycle all input substances, such as methane and hydrogen, so that water and fuel can be obtained by consuming soil.

However, a set of equipment takes decades to generate enough fuel to send the original Apollo-type lunar lander into orbit, so if you want to use it, you have to run multiple reactors on the moon at the same time.

Some teams try not to adopt chemical reactions, but deoxygenate from solid metal ores by energizing molten salt baths. They hope this technology can provide high-quality alloys for the aerospace industry and may also provide high-purity metals for machines used on the moon in the future.

It is estimated that 190 tons of lunar soil contains 15 to 16 tons of oxygen-containing iron minerals, which can produce 1 ton of oxygen. Only 1 ton of oxygen is required in a year to maintain the survival needs of 10 people on the moon.

Secondly, if humans want to live in the lunar self-sufficiency system, they must also ensure food supply, and food also needs water.

Where does the food come from?

In recent years, scientists have conducted a large number of biological experiments on the space station and have cultivated more than 100 "space plants", including wheat, corn, oats, soybeans, tomatoes, radishes, cabbage, beets, lettuce, etc.

It is also proved that under weightless conditions in space, plant seed germination rates are higher, grow faster, and bloom or head earlier in lunar soil.

Scientists also conducted experiments on some animals to prove that weightlessness will not affect the birth of new life.

In space stations, fruit flies can mate, lay eggs, and reproduce offspring like they do on Earth.

Bees can build nests, and queen bees will still have children.

The 60 quail eggs sent to the spacecraft can still hatch small quails after returning to the ground.

The fish eggs that had been shelved on the spaceship for 59 days were all hungry when they returned to the ground.

Mammals are no exception. Female rats and male rats are placed in cages and sent to space, and they still live together. Female rats are still pregnant and pregnant. After returning to the ground, they gave birth to the first generation of "space rats".

As long as a lunar agriculture and breeding base is established on the moon, the food sources of people on the moon are fully guaranteed.

Research also shows that the energy supply at lunar bases is no problem.

Because there is no wind or rain on the moon, clear and cloudy, there is sunshine all day long, and there is no atmospheric absorption, the radiation intensity of the sun is about 1.5 times that of the earth.

Therefore, solar energy can be used on the moon to illuminate, heat, heat and generate electricity.

Of course, if necessary...well, after the technology is mature, nuclear power plants can be established on the moon to ensure sufficient supply of base energy.

It can be said that scientists are optimistic about human survival exploration on the moon and have done a lot of experiments for this.

It's just about to conduct a real moon experiment.

No, there is a lunar experiment. At the beginning, Chang'e-4 carried a micro-ecology circle on Tianxia, ​​and the seeds inside successfully grew tender buds.

It is just because the micro-ecosphere is too "micro", it is more like an ecological tank than an ecosystem, with a total weight of only 3 kilograms, so it is not equipped with heating function, so after entering the moonlit period, the temperature inside the ecosystem drops sharply with the ambient temperature, and the young buds of the plant immediately die.

Now, Pilot and Tianxia are here, and there is also a completed astronaut survival capsule.

The astronaut's mission sequence includes animal and plant cultivation. There is a corner in the survival compartment, which has a planting module and a breeding box, which is specially used to cultivate plants and breed small animals.

So not only does fuel require water, they also need water, and they cannot be water brought from the earth.

On the evening of the second day after the astronauts landed on the moon, the Pilot and Tianxia Space Agency released a picture at the same time.

The picture is very clear, illuminated by lights, and under the light is a large area of ​​gray land. The most eye-catching thing is a white space suit arm, or the gray crystal in the palm.

Under the light, the crystal reflects inexplicable brilliance in some parts, and the translucent areas are even more eye-catching.

quartz?

crystal?

No, it's just a piece of dirty ice!

Yes, the name given to the picture by the Navigator and the Space Administration is "A Piece of Dirty Ice".

There is no need to guess this, they directly gave the answer to the riddle.

Grey land, spacesuit arms, ice!

outside world.

“!!!”

"Wait, no, is it the kind I think?!!"

"It's just the first day, did you make such a big discovery?"

"This is a real secret. The moon is born as a transit station for humans to move to space."

"Niu Pi has made a big deal. If you find water on the moon, it is equivalent to having everything!!"

"Ahhhh, the century's great discovery!"
Chapter completed!