Chapter 422 Lucy is missing
Chapter 422 Lucy is missing
20 seconds, 60 seconds, 5 minutes, 10 minutes…
As time passed, Kang Chi, staring at the numbers on the screen, was hypnotized.
When he woke up, it was already an hour later, and the test program was still running. The quantum lifespan displayed on it had soared to 230 million! Based on the current results, as long as Kang Chi analyzes the new technology inside and successfully finds new elements, the quantum chips produced in the future can not only greatly increase their lifespan, but also greatly reduce their size. The most important thing is that the cost of use may be lower than electromagnetic communication! After all, electromagnetic communication requires the construction of a large number of satellites and base stations, and the pulling of countless cables.
However, quantum communication only requires the establishment of one or a few data transfer centers to connect to terminals anywhere. Even if the terminal is locked in a few meters thick iron box, the signal is still very good.
At the same time, the data transfer center can ignore geographical restrictions and can be built wherever it wants.
The current military data transfer center is set up in the underground nuclear defense fortifications of the Pingfeng Mountain Base, and the security and stability of communication are guaranteed.
…
M country, Texas, San Antonio.
In stark contrast to Kang Chi’s excitement, the staff of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) are full of worries at this time.
It’s not because M country finally admitted defeat, but because their Lucy disappeared!
‘Lucy’ is a deep space exploration project led by the Southwest Research Institute. This mission deepens human understanding of the evolution of the solar system through close research on the remains of the birth of planets – the main asteroid belt and Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids.
At the same time, this is also the first time that humans have explored Trojan asteroids, which is of great significance.
In October 2021, the ‘Atlas 5’ rocket carrying the Lucy probe was successfully launched into space, and Lucy officially entered a 12-year interstellar journey.
During this long journey, Lucy will first go to the Sun-Jupiter Lagrange L4 region, and in this process will first visit an asteroid in the main asteroid belt, and then visit four Trojan asteroids in the Sun-Jupiter L4 region. Then it will fly back to Earth, using the Earth’s gravitational slingshot effect to help fly to the Sun-Jupiter Lagrange L5 region and reach the end of its journey: a pair of binary asteroids.
In April 2025, Lucy successfully flew close to a C-type asteroid numbered 52246-Donald johanson, which is located in the main asteroid belt and has a diameter of about four kilometers.
Lucy then continued to fly to the Sun-Jupiter L4 region and is expected to reach its second target: 3548-Eurybates in August 2027.
But in the middle of the journey from Donald johanson to Eurybates, Lucy suddenly lost contact! It has been 116 hours since Lucy lost contact. During this period, the Lucy team has been making various attempts, but still failed to receive any signal from Lucy. Project director Jay Rosales finally had no choice but to submit a report on the loss of contact to NASA and apply for the James Webb Space Telescope, hoping to search in the missing area. But unfortunately, the James Webb Space Telescope did not find any trace of Lucy.
NASA immediately set up a technical investigation team to find out whether the cause of the project failure was human technical omissions or unexpected factors, and to evaluate whether it was necessary to announce the news of Lucy’s disappearance to the outside world.
Today is the day when the investigation team arrived at the Southwest Research Institute. Project Director Jay Rosales and Orbital Designer Stanislav Morrow became their first inquiries.
”Have you found the reason for Lucy’s disappearance?”
”It’s not certain yet, but according to the flight data before Lucy lost contact, it suddenly deviated from its orbit during the flight, and then Lucy started the orbit automatic correction program, but the automatic correction program not only failed to save it, but caused the fuel to be quickly consumed and eventually lost contact.” Jay explained helplessly, ”You also know that with Lucy’s current distance from the earth, it takes about 55 minutes for the signal to be transmitted back, so when we received the data of Lucy’s deviation from the orbit, it actually happened 55 minutes ago. All we can do is watch it lose contact…” The head of the investigation team, Holka Van Dijk, nodded and asked, “What do you think about the reason why Lucy suddenly deviated from the orbit?”
”Weird!”
”Weird?”
”Yes, very weird!”
The orbit designer Stanislav Morrow, who was being investigated in the next room, showed a Lucy orbit design drawing, then pointed to the place where the contact was lost and said, “We analyzed the abnormal data after Lucy deviated from the orbit and found that Lucy seemed to be pulled over by the gravity of a celestial body, but in fact this place is empty and there is nothing.”
“How do you know there is nothing there?”
“It’s simple. An object that can capture Lucy must be very large in size and mass. Even if Lucy flies face-to-face with it at a very close distance to maximize its gravity, its size must be larger than a large asteroid like Vesta. But if there is such a large asteroid there, it is impossible that it has not been discovered so far. You have also used the James Webb Space Telescope to search there, but you didn’t find anything, right?”
Deputy team leader Georgiou Rice frowned and pondered for a moment, not knowing what other questions to ask.
This is really too contradictory and weird…
”Is there a possibility… There is actually a very small black hole there, which our telescopes can’t see at all?”
”Black hole?” Tanislav sneered, “Is there no one in NASA now? Let a newbie with no astronomical knowledge join the investigation team? Please check the cause of the formation of black holes first. Black holes can never appear in the solar system. Star death, star collision, or neutron star collision? If these things happened in the solar system, all of us would have seen God long ago!”
Tanislav’s merciless ridicule made Georgiou feel embarrassed, and he had to end the conversation with some dissatisfaction.
On the other side, Holka Van Dijk ended the conversation after understanding the situation almost completely, and began to communicate with Georgiou about the results of the first round of talks.
“Their words are full of contradictions. I think there must be a big problem here.” Georgiou said with certainty, “If we follow their analysis, then Lucy must have encountered a ghost. I can’t believe that such unscientific words were said by the two main persons in charge of the Lucy project!”
”Rather than believe their nonsense, I would rather believe that it was their mistakes that caused Lucy’s program to malfunction or structural design to be flawed. They just hide it from us because they are afraid of taking responsibility.”
Holka just smiled at this: “NASA sent us here, didn’t they just want to find out whether it was a program malfunction or a design flaw? Or you can be responsible for these technical investigations?”
”Uh…”
Georgiou’s expression froze immediately.
He is an agent who doesn’t understand technology at all. Let him check the technical problems of a space project? Isn’t this deliberately embarrassing him?
(End of this chapter)