"We did it!"
"Now, outside of us is Himalia, more than 700 million kilometers away from Earth … After a while, it may become 800 million or more. Anyway, it doesn't matter."
"There is an atmosphere here, but it's not dense, and most of it is nitrogen. The colonial unit is operating well, the energy reserves are full, and the oxygen supply is OK. The next step is to send an all-terrain exploration vehicle to investigate the terrain and resource distribution of Himalia … Hou Tao, how much longer do you want to wait! "
He roared into the intercom, and soon an answer came from the other end.
"I'm checking the hydraulic stability system … It'll be done soon. Give me five minutes."
"What a lucky guy!" The astronaut cursed in a low voice, then turned his head and continued to look at the camera. "According to the rules, we will draw lots to decide who will be the first to land on Himalia. Although it's not comparable to the first landing on the Moon and Mars, it's still a great honor. In a while, I will switch the camera to the exploration vehicle, and Hou Tao will continue to record … "
After finishing the last sentence, the astronaut reached out and tapped a few buttons on the touchpad to end the video recording.
According to Celestial Trade's colonial propaganda strategy, all colonial activities would be recorded into videos and sent to the Celestial Trade Space Command Center for backup. After being edited by professionals, the videos would be published on the official website, and the functions of broadcasting, downloading, and commenting would be open to all sectors of the society.
In order to ensure the recording effect, each colonial ship was usually equipped with a retired reporter or someone who had experience in the camera-related industry. Although there were still many differences between this research ship and a colonial ship, and the one that landed here could only be regarded as a colonial outpost at most, it was the first time they landed on Himalia, so the commemorative significance was quite significant. The survey ship was also equipped with a reporter with three years of work experience at the Xin Broadcasting Company.
The screen quickly switched to the all-terrain exploration vehicle.
The astronaut, who was about twenty-five years old, put on his helmet, excitedly gestured a peace sign at the screen, and then pressed the red button on the control interface.
It was his first colonial mission. Before that, he had been training at the astronaut training center on Ange Island. He had been preparing for this day for more than a year, so he was very excited at this moment.
With a sizzling sound that sounded like air leaking, the hatch of the buffer cabin slowly opened. He stepped on the accelerator and drove the exploration car toward this unknown land.
The whole planet was very dark, and the light from the sun was very weak. Jupiter, on the other hand, seemed to be brighter. The areas illuminated by the headlights were grayish-white or grayish-black soil, while the other areas were in deep darkness.
Soon, he arrived at the first observation point — a lake not far from the colony's outpost, which was the landing point of the second probe.
This lake was not big, at least compared to the large lake located at the south pole of Himalia. The detector floated in the middle of the lake. It was too difficult to retrieve it, so the colonists decided to leave it alone for now.
The all-terrain exploration vehicle was parked not far from the lake. The astronaut named Hou Tao slowly jumped out of the vehicle and carefully walked to the lake. Unlike Mars, the gravity here was very low. When getting out of the car, they had to restrain the cable to prevent them from using too much force when jumping like a kangaroo and being unable to come down.
Hydrocarbons are gases on Earth, but they are liquid on the surface of the bitterly cold Himalia.
The liquid mixture of methane-ethane was less viscous than water. If one were to cross a lake on Himalia, they wouldn't feel the same resistance as water.
All in all, it was a very wonderful experience, but it was best not to put your hands in it for too long. Even if the spacesuit designed by Celestial Trade used very advanced thermal insulation materials, the heat scattering caused by low-temperature fluids would still cause a lot of load on the constant temperature system of the spacesuit.
Hou Tao squatted by the lake, took out a sampler from the toolbox, quickly collected about 200ml of the liquid in the lake, and then stuffed it into the sample storage box of the vehicle. The liquid would be brought back to the colony unit for analysis to determine the composition and content ratio of hydrocarbons in the lake.
Then, he collected about 20 samples of soil and planted flags with numbers on the ground. These soil samples were very helpful for the study of the geological environment and resource distribution of Himalia, and this was also their mission for the next period of time.
After receiving the video data from the rover, the stationmaster of the outpost edited it and sent the data back to Earth. After doing all this, Lu Tao drove the rover back to the buffer cabin of the outpost. As the cabin was emptied and re-filled with air, he jumped out of the vehicle and walked into the disinfection room.
"The amount of radiation residue is normal."
"The amount of microbial adhesion … Eh?"
When checking the microbial residues, Lu Tao unexpectedly found that there were actually tiny microbial residues on the soles of his shoes.
"What the hell is this thing …"
However, just when he wanted to further study what this microorganism was, he found through the microbial detector that the bacteria on the soles of his feet had lost their activity.
…
On the second day after the colonial cabin was launched, Celestial Trade published a video of landing on Himalia on its official website.
Although people were no longer surprised by Celestial Trade's aerospace technology, no matter how many times they watched it, the scene that looked like it came out of a sci-fi movie was never boring.
The probe dropped first captured the entire landing of the colonial cabin. When they watched the silver-white spacecraft fall on the surface of Himalia, netizens from all over the world exclaimed.
"Celestial Trade has already begun to colonize Himalia?"
"Where is Himalia? My sense of direction is not very good. In short, it's farther than Mars? "
"Nonsense."
"Oh my God, I just want to know how many years they have to fly out of the solar system."
"I bet fifty years."
"Fifty years is too long! I bet twenty years. "
Then the video played the exploration vehicle driving out of the colonial cabin, and the scientific personnel in spacesuits jumped out of the vehicle to complete a series of sampling work. It was the first time that Celestial Trade published such a close-up alien colonization scientific research activity on its official website.
It was not only the netizens and astronomy enthusiasts around the world who paid attention to this video, but some professional space organizations such as ESA, NASA, and the Russian Space Agency also paid close attention to this video.
Especially the European Space Agency, which was excluded.
There were very few countries in Europe that joined the Earth Defense Alliance. This feeling of being excluded made many people feel uneasy. In particular, those aerospace workers who were fighting on the front lines knew what negative impact this would have on the development of European aerospace technology, and they also knew that Europe would gradually be out of touch with the world …
However, how could the decisions of the big shots be influenced by scientific researchers?
"Celestial Trade has already begun to colonize Himalia? Didn't they just land on Mars? Damn it, can they handle such a big project? "
"I don't know about this … and I heard that Celestial Trade has also invited other member states of the Earth Defense Alliance to join in this colonization plan."
"What?!"
"I have asked the European Commission more than once to seriously consider the necessity of joining the Earth Defense Alliance. Whether it is for common response to the crisis or from a development perspective, it is necessary … but I haven't received any reply yet."
"Damn, what are those idiots thinking?"
"Who knows!"
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