The video was shot and sent from the part of the spacecraft in orbit. The length was only one minute and fifty seconds.
In the video, a semicircular landing module separated from the Heart of Gold spacecraft, dragging flames behind it as it fell toward the thin atmosphere of Mars. Finally, it turned into a dot and disappeared at the edge of the Martian atmosphere …
Just like Lu Zhou had guessed, after the Mars landing was successful, NASA announced the relevant news on their official website. They edited the video captured by the Heart of Gold and posted it online.
What happened next was within his expectations.
In just ten minutes, the video, which was less than two minutes long, had a skyrocketing number of views. It finally reached the top three of the most popular videos on YouTube.
After watching the video, there was silence in the conference room, and no one spoke.
After a long time, Chen Yunhai coughed lightly and broke the silence.
"We need to discuss countermeasures —"
"There's nothing to discuss. I said from the beginning that we just need to do our job."
Lu Zhou closed the notebook on the table and looked at Academician Yuan Huanmin. After thinking for a moment, he asked, "How long will it take for the Moon Palace's living capsule to be ready?"
Academician Yuan hesitated for a moment before speaking.
"It's ready. The testing will take another week."
"Then the next launch is scheduled for two weeks later!" Lu Zhou stuffed the notebook into his bag and stood up from the conference table. "Go do your own things, meeting adjourned!"
…
The successful landing of the Heart of Gold won the United States a huge international reputation. The entire North America was in a sea of jubilation.
The comments section of the video released by NASA on YouTube and its official website had been flooded by netizens all over the world.
The New York Times deliberately placed a cartoon of a boxing glove with a star-spangled flag pattern next to the news report, as if they were trying to vent their anger at the Moon Palace's core module cooling system.
Even the Washington Post, which had always been known for its rigor, used the phrase "a great step in human history" to describe the success of the Mars landing plan.
In addition to the media coverage in North America, overseas media coverage also gave this matter the highest level of attention.
This time, BBC's evaluation was, as always, from the standpoint of watching a drama unfold. They stated that NASA had already gained the upper hand in this competition.
So far, compared to China's Moon Palace project, the Ares program seemed to be more advanced.
Compared to the helium-3 resource, which would take years and months to use, the abundant methane resources on Mars could be used as an energy source for liquid oxygen methane rocket engines.
It turned out that chemical propulsion technology was far from reaching a bottleneck. At least, the BFS rocket proved this point. The colony on Mars would also become a springboard for NASA to project spacecraft to other planets in the future.
The future of ion thruster propulsion might be more promising, but the liquid oxygen methane rocket engines didn't seem that bad.
While the popularity of the Ares program continued to rise, Space-X announced that it would be partnering with YouTube and other video sites to release videos of the Mars colonists on a regular basis for free.
While the popularity of the Ares program continued to rise, Space-X announced that it would open a business with YouTube and other video sites. They would also set up an online poll to collect people's opinions.
On the other hand, the White House and NASA released a message on their official websites, soliciting the names of the Mars colony from the American public. They also set up an online poll to collect people's opinions.
This event aroused considerable enthusiasm among the North American people. Even people who were not usually interested in aerospace participated in this name collection activity with interest.
In less than a day, the number of votes exceeded 30 million.
After some screening and elimination of a few obvious parody names, the White House finally announced "New Virginia" as the name of the first Mars colony.
Historically, this was where the British colonists began in North America.
Choosing this name to name the Mars colony was undoubtedly quite memorable.
After the name "New Virginia" was announced, NASA immediately announced the next step of the Ares program.
Before continuing to export immigrants to Mars, the immigrant pioneers stationed on Mars would survey the methane gas reserves, metal deposits, and other resources near the colony. They would also expand the scope of geological exploration activities to areas that couldn't be reached by remotely operated Mars rovers. They would explore the reserves of solid carbon dioxide in the polar regions of Mars, assess the feasibility of artificially starting the greenhouse effect to repair the Martian atmosphere, and most importantly, explore groundwater.
So far, it seemed like the scales of victory were tilting toward the east coast of the Pacific Ocean.
While North America was celebrating the success of the Ares program, the Lunar Orbit Committee on the other side of the Pacific Ocean was under a lot of pressure.
When the space station project first started, there was a lot of debate in the industry about whether to choose the "Moon Palace" or the "Celestial Palace". Now that the Ares program had made a breakthrough, the debate seemed to be even louder.
However, the chief designer of the Lunar Orbit Committee, Lu Zhou, didn't seem to care about these discussions.
The launch of the Moon Palace living module continued as planned.
After the living module was assembled, the Moon Palace, which had a functional module, a node module, and a laboratory module, would become a complete lunar space station. It would float in the "NRHO" orbit, ready for the ground command center to send researchers there.
On the other hand, this was the last component of the first phase of the Moon Palace project …
…
White House.
President's office.
The president had just returned from Congress. He was sitting in his office chair and flipping through the meeting notes. He was in high spirits.
At the previous meeting, the defeated expressions on the faces of the opposition MPs made him very happy, so much so that even the steak at noon became a lot more fragrant.
Just a week ago, the opposition party members were still attacking him for the excessive funding of the space program. Now, almost no one doubted that he was right.
The success of the Ares program was right!
The victory of the space race was right!
The president, who was leading the Americans to victory, was right!
As he signed his name on the document in his hand, he couldn't help but sneer when he recalled the councilors who had tactfully pointed out to him that he should restrain himself during the meeting.
"Why don't these idiots understand? Even though the space program costs a lot of money, it stimulates the economy and creates jobs. I don't know why they're not satisfied … "
Roosevelt's dams boosted the American economy, and his rockets could do the same.
He shook his head and threw the signed budget aside. He then picked up the next document about the California nuclear fusion power station project.
However, he was about to read it carefully when he heard a knock on the door.
He put down the document in his hand and cleared his throat. "Come in."
When the president saw Director Carson at the door, he had a bright smile on his face.
"Director Carson, it's nice to see you, please take a seat!"
Carson looked at the smiling president and didn't know what to say.
"Mr. President, it's nice to see you too …"
The president crossed his fingers on the table and leaned back in his office chair. He said in a pleasant tone, "It looks like you have something to say. Do you have any good news to report to me?"
"No … It might be the opposite of what you expected." Director Carson gulped and said, "Our colonists might have encountered a small problem …"
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