385: Chapter 385 Moon Landing: Chang'e - Spark

In the early morning at the Command Center, the sea breeze had died down. The coconut groves surrounding the launch site were silent in the darkness, with only the lights of the Command Center piercing the night like a lonely island. On the large screen, data streams flickered frantically—distance, speed, attitude, fuel remaining; every line of numbers tugged at the heartbeats of over three hundred people. The real-time footage at the top of the screen came from the camera of the "Chang'e-Spark" lander, as the grey lunar surface rushed toward them at a speed of 1.7 kilometers per second.

Chu Tianming stood before the main control console, his hands propped against the edge of the table, his knuckles turning white. Even at sixty years old and having experienced countless launches, his palms were still sweating slightly at this moment. Beside him, Liu Peiqiang sat in a chair, his reading glasses pushed up to his forehead, eyes fixed on the screen, his lips trembling slightly.

"Distance to the lunar surface: one hundred kilometers. Speed: 1.7 kilometers per second." The flight controller's voice came over the broadcast, as calm as if reading a weather forecast. "Lander status normal, all systems passed self-check."

Chu Tianming took a deep breath. The next seven minutes would be the "Seven Minutes of Terror"—from one hundred kilometers above the lunar surface to zero, under completely autonomous control. The 1.2-second communication delay between Earth and the Moon meant that any ground commands would be too late to intervene. Success or failure rested on this single moment.

"Distance: eighty kilometers. Main engine ignition, beginning deceleration." On the big screen, the engine at the bottom of the lander spewed orange-red flames, burning silently in the vacuum. The speed began to drop—1.5, 1.2, 1.0. The altitude was also falling—seventy kilometers, sixty kilometers, fifty kilometers.

No one spoke in the Command Center. Three billion people worldwide watched with bated breath via live stream; on Twitter, a hundred thousand new tweets were added every second, but here, there was only the sound of the jumping data stream.

"Distance: ten kilometers. Entering the final descent phase." The LiDAR beneath the lander began scanning the lunar surface, searching for the pre-set landing site—a flat area in the middle of the Oceanus Procellarum, only two hundred meters wide, surrounded by scattered impact craters and rocks of various sizes. The altitude numbers continued to skip: five kilometers, three kilometers, one kilometer. Speed: fifty meters per second, thirty meters per second, ten meters per second.

Chu Tianming's hands were shaking slightly, but his voice remained steady: "Zhulong, take over the final fifty meters."

The AI's voice came through the speakers, as calm as a pool of stagnant water: "Taking over. LiDAR data fusion. Avoiding rocks ahead. Searching for a flat area."

At 3:08 AM, the image on the big screen suddenly jolted. Lunar dust was kicked up by the engine, obscuring the camera and turning the screen a hazy grey-white. The data froze—

Altitude: 0 meters. Speed: 0 meters per second. Attitude: Normal.

Three seconds of silence.

Then, the Command Center erupted. Some stood up to applaud, some hugged each other, and some took off their glasses to wipe away tears. Liu Peiqiang sprang from his chair, not even noticing his reading glasses falling to the floor, as he grabbed Chu Tianming's shoulders, his voice hoarse: "We did it! We did it!"

Chu Tianming took off his headset and let out a long breath. He turned to look at the grey lunar surface on the big screen, his lips curling into a slight smile. Three hundred and eighty thousand kilometers, seven terrifying minutes, two thousand ground simulations—it was worth it.

At 3:15 AM, the lander's camera turned back on. The lunar dust had settled, and the wasteland of the Oceanus Procellarum was illuminated by the low-angle sunlight. Grey gravel and lunar soil stretched to the horizon, which felt much closer than on Earth, making one feel as if they were standing on top of a giant dome. Distant ridges cast long shadows in the morning light, devoid of any sign of life, leaving only eternal silence.

Chu Tianming's voice was broadcast globally, calm and firm: "'Chang'e-Spark' has landed successfully. The first step of human commercial spaceflight has been planted on the Moon."

At 4:00 AM, the lander's hatch slowly opened. Hydraulic mechanisms pushed the door downward to form a simple ramp. The yutu-3 lunar rover, which had waited inside the cabin for three hundred and eighty thousand kilometers, finally saw the outside world.

It slowly rolled out. Its six wheels stepped onto the lunar surface one by one, leaving deep tracks. This lunar rover was 1.5 meters high, two meters long, and weighed 240 kilograms, three times the size of 'Yutu-2'. It was equipped with panoramic cameras, an infrared spectrometer, radar detectors, and a robotic arm that could take samples, drill, and even write characters on the lunar surface using its mechanical hand.

The tire tracks extended across the lunar surface, spelling out eight Chinese characters. yutu-3's robotic arm carved into the lunar soil, stroke by stroke, like a calligrapher moving a brush on rice paper. In the global live broadcast, those eight characters were clearly visible—

"The sea of stars begins with a single step."

Twitter's servers almost crashed. "Chinese! For the first time, there's Chinese on the Moon!" "'Begins with a single step'—that's so romantic!" "NASA is still drawing blueprints while Xingchen has already started writing." Three billion people looked at those eight characters; some took screenshots, some set it as their wallpaper, and some teared up in front of their screens.

At 5:00 AM, the payload deployment began. The drilling sampler extended a long drill pipe, slowly boring into the lunar surface. The sound of the motor could not travel through the vacuum, but the vibration passed through the lander's structure to the camera, causing the image to tremble slightly. Two minutes later, the drill reached a depth of two meters, and the sampling tube brought up different layers of lunar soil samples—the surface regolith, the middle debris layer, and deep bedrock fragments. These samples would be sealed in the return capsule, waiting for the next mission to be sent back to Earth.

The nearby 3D printing experimental device started up. A small amount of lunar soil was fed into the printer, and a laser beam scanned the vacuum chamber, melting the lunar soil and stacking it layer by layer. Thirty minutes later, the first lunar soil brick was born—ten centimeters square, grey-white, with a rough surface but a dense structure.

Chu Tianming faced the camera, holding a scale model of that lunar soil brick, and said, "In the future, our lunar base will be built using the lunar soil itself. There's no need to transport bricks from Earth; building materials are everywhere on the Moon."

On the morning of May 21st, in Washington. The press conference at NASA headquarters began half an hour later than usual. Administrator Jim Bridenstine stood at the podium, with the NASA logo and an American flag behind him. His expression was complex, his lips tightly pursed, and the bags under his eyes were deeper than usual.

"First of all, congratulations to Xingchen Aerospace for successfully achieving a soft landing on the Moon." His voice was hoarse, as if he hadn't slept all night.

He paused, his gaze sweeping over the reporters below. These words coming from his mouth had a bitter taste—the Administrator of NASA, congratulating a Chinese company on a lunar landing.

"We must admit that in the field of commercial spaceflight, the United States has fallen behind."

The room erupted. The sound of shutters was as dense as a rainstorm, and the reporters' arms rose like a forest. The reporter from The New York Times was the first to be called on and immediately asked, "How far behind?"

Bridenstine was silent for three seconds. Those three seconds felt like three centuries. He looked at the cameras below, his lips moved, and then he said, "It is difficult to give a specific assessment. However, Xingchen's lander weighs five tons, while the current commercial lunar payloads of the United States are only a few dozen kilograms."

The Washington Post reporter followed up: "What about NASA's Artemis Program?"

"We are moving forward with it."

"Can we land in 2024?"

Bridenstine fell silent again. He didn't answer, only saying, "Next question."

At 11:00 AM, Twitter exploded. "Chinese on the Moon" shot to number one on the global trends, followed by a rocket icon and a Mars icon. "The sea of stars begins with a single step" was second. "NASA behind" was third.

God-tier comments from netizens poured in like a tide. One tweet with over a million likes read: "NASA is still using PPTs to land on the moon, while Xingchen is already driving a car." The attached image showed a rendering of NASA's Artemis Program side-by-side with the actual footage of yutu-3 writing on the lunar surface.

Another top comment: "'Begins with a single step'—this phrase on the Moon is just too epic. The Chinese people have carved romance into their genes."

And another: "Three billion people watching the live stream; this is the highest-rated program in human history. Bar none."

Even more savage was this one: "NASA: We have fallen behind in the field of commercial spaceflight. Translation: We lost."

At 2:00 PM, in Shenzhen. Su Chen sat in his office, watching the excitement on Twitter and smiling. Lin Wan handed over a report; the first batch of data sent back by yutu-3 had already been analyzed.

"President Su, the geological structure of the Oceanus Procellarum region is even more suitable for building a base than expected. The shallow lunar soil is three to five meters thick, with basalt bedrock underneath; the bearing capacity is sufficient. The water ice content is also higher than expected, with about twenty liters of water per ton of lunar soil."

Su Chen nodded: "Have the team do a detailed analysis. The 2022 base site selection will depend on this data."

He stood up and walked to the window. The Shenzhen skyline shimmered in the sunlight, and the waters of Shenzhen Bay in the distance were sparkling.

"Moon, here we come."

Outside the window, the sunlight was just right. Three hundred and eighty thousand kilometers away, yutu-3 sat on the wasteland of the Oceanus Procellarum, its six wheels on the ground and its solar panels deployed like a silver flower blooming on the grey earth. Beside it, those eight Chinese characters sat silently on the lunar surface, witnessing a new coordinate of human civilization.