The rise of nanometers

The five engineers of Long Totem and the working group of Detector No. 33 went back and forth to check the data and repeatedly played the video data of the detector.

Chang Haitao, a mechanical engineer of the working group, and Wang Anmin, the team leader, once again activated the on-board camera of the Mars 33 probe through remote control.

Six on-board cameras, two of which are mounted on rotatable robotic arms.

Through the camera on the robotic arm, they carefully inspected the radiator of the on-board nuclear battery again.

After carefully observing the feedback video, Chang Haitao looked a little confused. He picked up the technical instruction manual and looked through some data about the radiator again.

Soon he found some doubts, turned around and asked the Long Totem engineer: "Mr. Zhao, is the heat sink plate of the thermosiphon radiator gray?"

Engineer Zhao was stunned for a moment, then nodded: "Yes, the heat sink plate of the thermosiphon radiator is gray when it leaves the factory. The heat sink plates of all types of radiators produced by our company are all gray. What's wrong with this? Problem?"

"Grey? What's the specific color number?" Chang Haitao may have felt that what he said was not accurate, so he organized his words again:

"I mean the color of the heat sink. What color will it appear in the Martian environment?"

In fact, his question is not just looking for trouble, because two items with the same specifications and materials will have some differences in color in outer space, blue stars, and Mars.

This is because there will be certain differences in the light reflected from the surface of objects in different environments.

It is mainly caused by differences in atmospheric concentration, atmospheric composition, and light intensity.

In other words, the heat sink is indeed gray when it leaves the factory on Blue Star, but it is not necessarily gray when it is on the surface of Mars. Even if it is also gray, there may be slight differences.

Engineer Zhao thought for a while: "This is indeed a problem worth studying. We can check some radiators that have not failed and compare the chromaticity of the two to see whether there is a difference between the two."

Wang Anmin immediately contacted other working groups responsible for Mars detectors, and soon obtained photos of the radiators of the eight detectors.

In order to reduce errors, the radiator models of the eight detectors he specially selected were the same as those of detector No. 33.

After careful comparison, Chang Haitao, Engineer Zhao and others discovered some clues.

Although the color of the faulty heat sink of detector No. 33 is also gray, it is obviously darker.

The heat sink plates of the other eight detectors are gray in color.

"Is it possible that the terrain of Mariner Canyon blocks the sunlight?" one of the engineers said uncertainly.

Engineer Zhao shook his head: "There is no reason. Detector No. 26 and Detector 38 are both in the valley, and the longitude and latitude are not much different from those of Detector 33. In addition, I looked at the light intensity of each detector and there is no obvious difference. "

"In other words, the color of the heat sink plate on No. 33 may be caused by abnormal conditions," Chang Haitao came to a preliminary conclusion.

But what exactly is going on?

Everyone was still puzzled. After all, the surface of the heat sink was coated with a high-strength nano-film. Not to mention Martian sandstorms, even if a big rock hit it directly, there would not be a single scratch.

When these detectors were designed at that time, simple and crude thermoelectric materials were used to increase reliability and reduce problems such as mechanical failures and electronic interference.

While everyone was thinking hard, around five o'clock in the afternoon the next day, another piece of bad news came back from Mars 33.

The efficiency of the spare radiator showed a slow decline half an hour ago. By the time the news was fed back to Blue Star, the efficiency of the radiator had dropped to 86.2%.

You should know that according to the design life of Long Totem Company, the efficiency of this model of radiator will not decrease by more than 0.2% on average every year.

Even in the harsh outer space environment, the decline should not be higher than 0.5% per year.

Probe 33 has only been working on Mars for more than eight months, not even a year.

Not to mention this is a stock radiator.

"What's going on?" Wang Anmin's face became solemn.

The cause of the failure of the first radiator was not yet clear, but now there is also a problem with the other backup radiator, which makes everyone in the work group feel helpless.

After all, if the nuclear battery of the detector cannot dissipate heat in time, it will easily burn the circuit and parts, causing the detector to be directly paralyzed and scrapped.

As time went by, No. 33’s on-board supercomputer continued to feed back the situation.

Finally, 18 hours later, the effective heat dissipation efficiency of No. 33's backup radiator dropped below 20%.

Even if the emergency system is activated and a boron-carbon buffer is inserted to slow down the nuclear decay of the nuclear battery, the core temperature of the nuclear battery body is still rising slowly and uncontrollably.

"Damn it! What went wrong?" Chang Haitao grabbed his hair and thought with a headache on his face.

Wang Anmin, who felt that the situation was a bit out of control, quickly reported the matter to the Ministry of Aerospace, and the Ministry of Aerospace once again organized an expert team to come over to help analyze.

Two days have passed, and the core temperature of the nuclear battery of Probe 33 is getting higher and higher. If it is not dealt with, it will affect other components.

As a last resort, the working group could only use remote control to remove the nuclear battery and activate the backup salt nano-battery and the originally folded solar panels.

Although the loss of the nuclear battery has caused the daily available power of No. 33 to drop to about 15% of the previous level, at least No. 33 will not be scrapped directly.

Unconsciously, another four days passed. When Chang Haitao checked No. 33 again, his expression suddenly froze.

He called up the photos from the past few days and compared them with today's photos. He found that the color of the two radiator heat sink plates of the No. 33 detector had changed from gray to gray.

"What's going on?" Chang Haitao fell into deep thought again.

After reporting this discovery to the expert group, this new phenomenon aroused everyone's interest.

After careful review and research, they quickly discovered the key to the problem, which was the existence of a nuclear battery, which may be the core factor that caused this radiator failure.

The expert team immediately decided to let No. 33 get close to the removed nuclear battery.

After throwing down the nuclear battery before, in order to ensure safety, the working group operated No. 33, more than 700 meters away from the nuclear battery.

In order to find out, No. 33 turned around and returned again.

When No. 33 approached the location where the nuclear battery was discarded, less than 20 meters away, the problem was finally discovered.

I saw a layer of black and gray stuff surrounding the nuclear battery. Those things were like spider silk, wrapping around the nuclear battery.

"What is this?"

"Some kind of Martian creature?"

Everyone started discussing in surprise. It was obvious that this situation was some kind of creature that was relying on the heat of the nuclear battery to continue to grow and reproduce.

Using the No. 33 sampling robot, several samples were collected, and the instruments carried on it were used to conduct a careful test on this unknown creature.

As the laboratory data continued to come back, everyone finally figured out some of the characteristics of this strange creature and why they caused radiator failure.

Thank you for your support (ω｀)