222: Chapter 222 Dust Eye No. 1

On the eighth day after qingqiong-1's recovery, the Joint Mission Committee held a meeting in Beijing.

The meeting secretary had arranged twenty-three documents in advance. The first page was the recovery mission summary, the second was the extended-life scientific plan, and only after the third page did it come to resources, responsibilities, and funding.

Shao Cen asked Song Yao to play the operation records of the four ground windows at normal speed.

After the carrier wave was extended for 0.8 seconds for the first time, there were more than four seconds in the footage where only the spectrum and waiting remained, and no one in the conference room urged to fast-forward either.

The 486 sets of Physics boundary tests completed by shadow star, the independent reviews of the five subsystems, and the approval and return results of every single command could all find their corresponding serial numbers in the verification report at hand.

Even before the first formal command was issued, this recovery had already integrated the possible responses the satellite might give into the subsequent path.

The Joint Mission Committee confirmed the recovery procedures item by item.

The flight records of qingqiong-1 were officially archived and listed as a shared case for the loss-of-contact disposal of small satellites of the same type.

The committee confirmed Jiang Lin as the chief technical designer for this recovery mission, responsible for the fault recovery architecture and method promotion for similar missions.

Shao Cen continued to serve as the mission chief scientist, and the general design, telemetry, tracking and command (TT&C), payload, and flight control responsibilities of the original development team remained unchanged.

A new main task of "directional observation of near-Earth dust" was added to the extended-life phase, with Jiang Lin concurrently serving as the scientific head.

After the final vote passed, the secretary removed the temporary name tag in front of Jiang Lin and replaced it with an official one.

[ Chief Technical Designer of qingqiong-1 Recovery Mission / Scientific Head of Extended-Life Phase: Jiang Lin ]

Jiang Lin moved the name tag a few centimeters to the left so as not to block the signature column of the next document.

The Preparatory Jianglin Center for Cross-Disciplinary Sciences, Tsinghua University obtained the controlled scientific data interface of qingqiong-1, the mission simulator opened an independent instance to the center, and the cooperative ground stations provided twenty-four test windows each year, reserving priority channels for abnormal missions.

The space technology unit opened a joint mission laboratory, providing the center with conditions for vacuum thermal testing, vibration testing, and clean assembly on the premise of not contacting restricted model information.

The center's technical liaison instantly received the system administrator account, the administrative assistant received the first joint space science project serial number, and the financial page simultaneously added an external joint funding of 12 million yuan.

The initial three-year amount of 60 million yuan was still the total control figure for the research center (preparatory). This money came from a new mission established by the cooperative units of qingqiong-1, with separate account establishment and separate acceptance.

The committee also approved the special performance bonus for the recovery mission, which was distributed by the original team according to flight duty, data preservation, and engineering contributions.

Jiang Lin's due share as the technical lead was listed separately in the table. He checked the amount and signed his name in the confirmation column.

His achievements, position, remuneration, and privileges all entered formal documents, without needing a tenure speech to prove their existence.

The agenda had reached the last line, but Xu Kaiyang did not announce the adjournment of the meeting.

The side door of the conference room opened, and two staff members pushed in a white transport cabinet.

The cabinet wheels bumped slightly when crossing the threshold. Xu Kaiyang reached out to support the anti-tipping bracket on the side, and only after the staff members stepped down all four wheel locks did he break the seal.

The cabinet doors opened to both sides, revealing a satellite structure that had completed the initial platform assembly.

The honeycomb panels, load-bearing frames, satellite management computer, and solar wings folded on both sides had all been installed in place, with standard interfaces left at the top and around the platform that had not yet been connected to payloads.

The original mission label was affixed to the inside of the transport cabinet.

[ Backup Platform for University Space Environment Technology Test Satellite 02 ]

This platform was originally reserved for three university technology payloads.

Two of them obtained another batch of piggyback opportunities while waiting for launch and had been transferred to other satellites; the last one withdrew due to development progress and missed the platform freeze node.

After all three payloads left, the platform's own environmental test schedule, TT&C protocol, and the piggyback launch window 14 months later remained valid.

What had truly become vacant was no longer a certain payload cabin, but a complete satellite that had entered engineering scheduling and temporarily lacked a main mission.

After qingqiong-1's recovery, the three universities and the space technology unit resubmitted task proposals.

The joint committee decided to reorganize the 02 platform as a whole into a near-Earth dust directional imaging mission. The platform general team remained in office, and Jiang Lin was responsible for the scientific objectives, payload plan, on-orbit plan, and mission team.

Shao Cen pushed the final document across the desk.

[ Project Proposal for Dust Eye 1 Near-Earth Dust Directional Imaging Mission ]

The launch contract number, platform delivery date, environmental test schedule, ground station list, and on-orbit operation responsibilities had been filled into the appendix.

The initial main payload could use 18 kilograms of mass, a continuous power of 120 watts, and an independent data transmission channel, with the remaining interfaces reserved for calibration components, platform margins, and subsequent expansion.

The directional fine structure Jiang Lin discovered in qingqiong-1's data required a new detector capable of simultaneously observing multiple directions to complete independent re-testing.

The new main payload would deploy double-layer sensitive films in six directions extending beyond the platform's shielding area, combining time-of-flight differences and impact signals to jointly recover the particle velocity range, and then cross-calibrate with qingqiong-1's single-sided scanning.

As long as Dust Eye 1 worked, the subsequent 12-star directional sampling architecture could be built on real instrument data.

Xu Kaiyang took a pen out of the folder.

"From the general design to on-orbit operation, this satellite is entirely under your charge."

"What about the original general team?"

"Four people are staying on, and the platform manager is also staying."

Xu Kaiyang pointed at the transport cabinet.

"They are familiar with this platform, and you are responsible for telling them what this satellite needs to do next."

Jiang Lin flipped through the appendix from beginning to end and signed his name in the project leader column.

"Launch in fourteen months?"

"The piggyback contract states a window, not a guaranteed specific day."

"That's enough."

"The platform is sent into the joint laboratory today, and both the payload cabin and external interfaces can be adjusted according to the new mission."

"I'll give the first version of the interfaces tomorrow morning."

Xu Kaiyang had originally been holding down a platform margin introduction, but upon hearing this, he flipped it to the appendix.

"I should already be used to your units of time."

"This time it's counted in real time."

Someone around the conference table laughed.

The staff members closed the transport cabinet again, and Jiang Lin took the platform seal and the joint laboratory access card.

The seal was very light in his hand, but what it corresponded to was a satellite with a launch contract, a TT&C chain, an engineering team, and clear orbit and mission permissions.

At 9:00 a.m. the next day, the first version of the payload interface document entered the joint laboratory system.

The six-sided detector, front-end electronics, calibration source, and structural thermal control shared the 18-kilogram main payload budget, and the four power consumption modes of observation, standby, calibration, and data transmission were also respectively integrated into the platform safety strategy.

In the assembly area, the general team spread out a honeycomb panel sample the same size as the satellite's top plate, with the solar wing folding boundaries, star sensor field of view, and attitude thruster restricted areas pasted on the surface in different colors.

Among the six detection directions, two would be blocked by the platform edge when the solar wings were folded.

Jiang Lin had already arranged a 420-millimeter short support truss for the main detector in the first version of the interfaces. The six-sided sensitive films were located above the outer contour of the platform, folded and locked during transport, and deployed once after entering orbit.

The structural engineer installed mass-equivalent parts onto the sample board, the thermal control personnel attached three temperature points to the base of the truss, and the platform manager pushed the folded solar wing model along both sides.

The occlusion angle, deployment envelope, and payload center of mass all fell within the ranges given by the interface document.

"How much mass does this truss take up?"

The structural engineer asked, looking at the weighing result.

"One thousand seven hundred and sixty grams; the interface table reserved 1,900."

Jiang Lin put the remaining 140 grams back into the structural margin, without casually allocating them to any electronic equipment.

Before lunch, all six detection windows on the sample board obtained the signatures of the general team.

The platform manager took the interface freeze table of the original 02 project down from the wall and replaced it with the version for Dust Eye 1.

Jiang Lin's final technical confirmation column was newly added at the bottom of the table, while the five heads of structure, thermal control, power supply, satellite management, and TT&C still retained their respective professional signature positions.

The general team's names were not wiped out by a new mission card, nor did Jiang Lin need to go through them to command this satellite.

After he finished signing the first freeze table, the platform manager took the table to the configuration management room. Every engineering serial number enabled by the joint laboratory that day expanded downward from this table.

Any platform single-point failure could force the payload back down to safe power consumption, and Jiang Lin additionally left a 12% mass margin and a 15% peak power margin for the main payload.

The general team had originally reserved three days for the first round of coordination.

On the same day, the five subsystems of structure, thermal control, power supply, satellite management, and TT&C completed independent recalculations, and the proposed modifications were all concentrated on interface formats and current templates, with not a single engineering gap requiring a return to the scheme layer for processing.

At 4:00 p.m., the project page changed from "Task Pending" to "General Scheme Baseline Established".

Electrical components would be delivered in three months, mechanical tests would be entered in six months, joint testing with the platform would take place in nine months, and two rounds of full-mission drills would be reserved before the launch window.

The original team of qingqiong-1 directly became the first batch of flight backbones for Dust Eye 1.

The young TT&C engineer who had once guarded the 97-day loss-of-contact window was assigned to be responsible for the new star's low-speed safety beacon.

He took the interface task and found Jiang Lin.

"Still using the old design of qingqiong-1?"

Jiang Lin called up the short-pulse protocol used during recovery.

"Keep the beacon, and add another underlying entry specifically prepared for loss of contact."

"You write the first version, and once finished, directly connect it to shadow star for verification."

The young engineer hugged the documents back to his workstation and submitted the interface draft that very night.

The transport cabinet of the joint laboratory stopped behind the glass of the clean area, and the original platform label had been moved to the side.

Next to the blank interface on the top was an additionally printed mission card.

[ Dust Eye 1 ]

Jiang Lin swiped his newly issued access card, and the lights in the clean area lit up sequentially along both sides of the platform.