The rise of nanometers

2023, May 17.

An 18.6-ton probe that previously set off from a Mars outpost has now arrived in the orbit of Jupiter.

Specifically, it is in the orbit of Jupiter's moon Europa.

The name of the detector is "Heather". This is a detector that symbolizes life. Its purpose is to detect whether there is life on Europa.

After the probe entered Europa's orbit, it circled around Europa's 275-kilometer orbit and did not launch a lander.

This is because Jupiter has a very strong magnetic field, and it also has 79 natural satellites, as well as a large number of affiliated asteroids and ice crystals.

Faced with such a complex astronomical environment, even if the Ministry of Aeronautics and Astronautics has various response plans, it still cannot take it lightly.

Although the Federation could afford to lose the detector, it wouldn't be better if the loss could be avoided.

Currently, there are a total of 7 communication relay satellites arranged by the Ministry of Aerospace in the orbit of Jupiter, 3 of which are in the synchronous orbit of Jupiter.

Merely placing communication satellites in Jupiter's synchronous orbit is not enough to ensure perfect Jupiter communications.

Because Jupiter has so many large natural satellites, it is easy to obscure communications in some areas.

In order to ensure relatively smooth communication quality, the remaining four communication satellites are arranged in Jupiter's middle orbit and Jupiter's low-Earth orbit.

Of course, such a communication satellite arrangement still has some short-term communication dead spots. In the future, the Ministry of Space Affairs plans to add a batch of communication satellites in various orbits of Jupiter to increase the total number of communication satellites to 64.

Only in this way can the quality of communications on Jupiter be fully guaranteed and the connections between other spacecraft and outside Jupiter be maintained in good condition.

Su Xiaoyu at the Mars outpost is controlling the Heather remotely through the remote control system.

Of course, this kind of remote control is actually more about observation, because the distance between the two parties at this time reaches about 270 million kilometers, and a round trip of electromagnetic waves takes about 1,800 seconds, which is a communication delay of 30 minutes.

With such a long communication delay, even if the Heather encounters an emergency, it can only rely on its own automatic control program to deal with it.

Su Xiaoyu looked at the scene in front of him from 15 minutes ago. At this time, the Heather was flying around Europa.

The orbiting flight altitude is between 275 and 311 kilometers.

In fact, this orbiting height is already relatively high. After all, the diameter of Europa is only 3138 kilometers, which is a little smaller than the moon's diameter of 3474 kilometers.

If the volume and mass are too small, it means that its own gravity will be relatively weak.

According to the gravity data collected by previous detectors, Europa's surface gravity is about 1.3, while the moon's surface gravity is about 1.622.

In addition, Europa does not have a dense atmosphere, so it can basically maintain a smooth orbit at its altitude of 275 to 311 kilometers.

Su Xiaoyu carefully looked through the data fed back by the Heather.

Although Europa does not have a dense atmosphere, it still has a thin atmosphere, the main component of which is oxygen.

That's right, the main component of Europa's atmosphere is oxygen.

But the source of oxygen in Europa's atmosphere does not come from the photosynthesis of plants or microorganisms, but from the ice layer on its surface radiated by the sun, allowing water molecules to photodecompose into oxygen and hydrogen.

Since hydrogen gas easily escapes into outer space, only oxygen with a relatively heavy atomic mass remains in Europa's atmosphere.

Another data that Su Xiaoyu observed carefully was the dense brown-yellow cross patterns on the surface of Europa. These brown-yellow cross patterns are actually traces of volcanic activity.

Among a series of planets in the solar system, Europa is a very special planet, with an ice layer about 100 kilometers thick, a metallic core, huge tidally locked friction, an oxygen-rich atmosphere, highly active geological movements, rich Subsurface ocean of liquid water.

This is also a planet with a very young landscape. From its smooth surface, you can see how young Europa is.

Because planets are geologically inactive, there will be a large number of craters, which are similar to craters on the surface of the moon.

Only planets with highly active geology can cover the traces of asteroid impacts through frequent geological activities.

Those brown and yellow crosses are the seismic volcanic belts of Europa. These geological volcanic belts are still active.

After a week of orbiting, Heather detected 16 micro-volcanic eruptions.

Due to the special structure of Europa, when volcanoes erupt inside it, there will not be a large amount of volcanic ash, only some sulfur dioxide and water vapor, plus a small amount of carbon dioxide and radon.

In more than a week, Su Xiaoyu contacted Blue Star's aerospace department headquarters many times to discuss Heather's next mission.

Heather consists of an orbiter and a lander, with the orbiter weighing 6.3 tons and the lander weighing 12.3 tons.

The key point of discussion between Su Xiaoyu and the headquarters now is mainly the landing area of ​​the lander.

Although Europa is a low-gravity natural satellite, its geological activity is too active, and its surface is covered with ice and an oxygen-rich atmosphere.

This environment is a great test for the design of the lander. For example, in an oxygen-rich atmosphere, fires need to be prevented; and in earthquakes, how to avoid falling into cracks.

Especially the latter. Although the surface of Europa is the smoothest among the terrestrial planets in the solar system, this is only on a macro scale.

If the scale is adjusted to the meter level, the surface of Europa is actually an ice sheet terrain with crisscrossed ravines.

Under the tidal locking of Jupiter, Europa's ice layers are very unstable and often squeeze and break against each other.

Even the ice surface that looks very smooth is just a weak ice layer on the surface, and there may be cracks underneath.

In this environment, a lander previously launched by the Federation into Europa fell into an ice chasm with a width of six to seven meters. The depth below reached more than three hundred meters, and the lander was directly smashed and disabled.

Having learned from the previous experience and lessons, the Space Ministry did not throw away the lander in a hurry. After all, although the material and technology costs of sending a probe to Jupiter are not high, the time cost is too high.

Jupiter is too far away from the Blue Star to send hundreds of probes a year like Mars and Venus.

At present, the Ministry of Aeronautics and Astronautics has fully booked its missions to Jupiter, with only 30 to 50 detectors a year.

Therefore, the Heather's lander must carefully examine the landing area. It must not be sent directly to the ice crack valley like the last time.

To deal with this problem, Heather's orbiter is equipped with a set of equipment specially used to detect geology.

Through the data collected by this set of equipment, Su Xiaoyu has drawn a surface map of Europa based on the data.

This map also includes some stratigraphic conditions, which can be explored to a depth of approximately 500 to 1,500 meters. In terms of accuracy, it ranges from the surface to 1,500 meters underground, with an accuracy of 1 centimeter to 35 meters.

Although the accuracy of underground ice layers will plummet as the depth increases, this does not affect the analysis.

After all, the Heather's lander is meant to land on the surface, not underground. As long as it accurately analyzes the conditions within 500 meters of the surface and underground, there will basically be no problem of falling into an ice chasm.

Of course, if there is a sudden earthquake and a large rift occurs near the lander, there is nothing we can do.

Thank you for your support (ω｀), there will be another chapter before twelve o’clock (˙o˙)