The Falcon 1 spacecraft, which has been in service for decades, once again took on this mission.

The Falcon One and Two spacecraft are the only two means to connect the human base and the Tinder spacecraft. The damage of any spacecraft is an unacceptable loss. During these decades, everyone has cherished and maintained them as much as possible. Their quality has withstood the test of a long time.

Until now, although they have become older and older, there is no major failure.

Saying goodbye to the children, Zhao Changxing drove Falcon 1 alone and embarked on a long journey.

This is the first time in decades that Zhao Changxing has driven them away from Sedna Star.

Under Zhao Changxing's control, its speed is not very fast, and its maximum speed is only 10 kilometers per second. At this speed, it will take Zhao Changxing a full 6 days to reach the vicinity of the asteroid.

The reason why it is so slow is not because it does not have the ability to accelerate to higher speeds, but because Zhao Changxing must save fuel, otherwise he will not have the ability to return after the exploration is completed.

After all, this is a landing spacecraft, not a starship.

After the initial acceleration, the spacecraft entered the inertial navigation mode. Zhao Changxing was waiting silently in the narrow cabin, joining the stars and endless darkness all day long. Fortunately, during this period, he could communicate with the Fire Spaceship and the human base at any time, and grasp the progress of the engineering there at any time, so he had something to do. Otherwise, even if he stayed in such a small space for so long, no matter how tough he was, he would not be able to stand it.

Zhao Changxing did not stop people's demolition, but everything went according to the original plan.

The long sailing time finally passed. The Falcon 1 spacecraft began to slow down and finally hovered at a place only more than a thousand meters away from the asteroid.

The gravity from this asteroid is almost nothing, at least Zhao Changxing can't feel it at all. Only the precision equipment shows that every hour the Falcon spacecraft "falls" to the asteroid by 0.0 meters can Zhao Changxing know that even such a small planet has gravity.

At this moment, under the sunlight, the asteroid showed a black and gray luster. Its surface was extremely uneven, with a large pile of rocks and very sharp edges. Under the deep cosmic background, it was like a huge monster.

After the spacecraft remained roughly relatively still from the asteroid, Zhao Changxing immediately manipulated several equipment he brought to start observation.

With the faint sound of drops, a straight line was slowly advancing in the device screen. Suddenly, the straight line rose instantly and refused to fall again. This made Zhao Changxing's heart jump violently.

"Alpha decay, helium nucleus... This asteroid does have radiation!"

α decay is a particle released by a radioactive element when it decays. It consists of two neutrons and two protons and does not carry electrons. It has weak penetration ability, and just a piece of white paper can block it.

But this is the cosmic vacuum. Even if the distance is about one thousand meters apart, Zhao Changxing can directly observe its existence through equipment. Of course, if the distance is too long, it cannot be observed even in the universe, just like the Torna spacecraft and Sedna star that are millions of kilometers apart.

Observing the alpha decay made Zhao Changxing instantly excited. Because this means that his guess has been initially confirmed. That is, there are a large number of radioactive heavy elements on this asteroid!

And this also means that the extraordinary "high temperature" on its surface - the question of as high as minus 251 degrees Celsius, has been explained.

When radioactive heavy elements undergo radioactive decay, such as alpha radiation, they will release decay heat. Then, a reasonable speculation can be made: the decay of a large number of radioactive heavy elements present on this asteroid heats it and makes it appear at a higher temperature.

After confirming that the Alpha radiation existed, Zhao Changxing operated the Falcon spacecraft slightly and brought it closer to the asteroid a little, about a few dozen meters away. Then he opened the hatch door, wore a space suit, and landed directly on the asteroid.

After his feet really touched the surface of this asteroid and maintained stability, after carefully sensation, he finally felt a little gravity. But the gravity was extremely small, and he could even clearly feel that as long as he moved a little, he could directly obtain a speed higher than the escape speed of this asteroid and stay away from this star body from now on.

Its escape speed is only a few centimeters per second, or even lower.

On the surface of a dim asteroid, Zhao Changxing was carefully searching for what he wanted to see.

He saw the deep and dark canyon, the towering "peaks", and the rugged "earth", but his sight never stopped on these things. After a long time, he leaped gently and obtained the speed to escape the gravitational field of the asteroid, and his body rose directly. Then, the spacesuit propulsion system was activated, pushing it to start rotating around the asteroid at a height of only a few meters away.

His eyes continued to look for something he wanted to see like a scanner.

He circled around the asteroid, and then searched the planet for almost half of the "surface" and stopped until he saw a "haze" and flew over quickly.

At the same time, this discovery also made his heart beat violently again.

It was a "fountain".

The fountain is located in a crack at the tip of this long asteroid. There is nothing at the crack, but just a few decimeters away from the crack, he can see some roughly blue or white crystals appearing out of thin air through his naked eyes. These crystals float out of thin air, or slowly float into space, disappear from now on, or slowly float on the surface of the asteroid, and accumulate.

Next to the crack, Zhao Changxing saw that a layer of this crystal had been laid on its surface.

And this kind of crystal is often seen on Sedna Star.

The white one is probably solid carbon dioxide or other things of the same color. The blue one should be solid oxygen.

This fountain clearly shows that there is a higher pressure inside the asteroid and gaseous gases. The higher pressure causes these gases to eject through the gaps, and then they lose their heat and condense into solids, either escape from the asteroid, or land on the surface.

In the dark and cold universe, they should have been frozen into solids and should not exist in gaseous form. But since this asteroid has more radioactive elements, it is understandable that they will change from solid to gaseous under the influence of decay heat.

In this way, the mass of this asteroid is much lower than previously estimated and does not match its density, and is also answered.

It should be indeed hollow. Why does it not collapse into the interior? The reason is also very simple, and the fountain in front of it can be answered. That is because there is higher pressure and temperature inside it. Where does the higher pressure and temperature come from? It comes from radioactive heavy elements.

At this point, Zhao Changxing finally figured out the strange data presented by this asteroid before.

But this leads to another problem.

The radioactive heavy elements that are enough to heat the asteroid as a whole must have a relatively fierce decay rate, which means that its half-life will not be too long. At the same time, even if the interior of this asteroid is composed of solid dry ice, oxygen, methane, nitrogen, etc., its stock is limited. If it continues to spray, it will not take too long to consume it.

This means that the state that this asteroid is present at this moment is just a short part of its entire life. This time may be only a length of thousands to tens of thousands of years. Once this period is spent, it will return to coldness and silence and will never be able to eject anything.

"Maybe another asteroid containing a large amount of radioactive heavy elements hit it and merged with it. So it gained the ability to heat itself and appeared before us soon."

Zhao Changxing made a guess about this. As for why there are so many radioactive heavy elements in the other star body, where do so many radioactive heavy elements come from - whether it comes from the decay of the other elements, or due to some special physical changes, it is unknown.

"Maybe... this matter has something to do with the strange signals Xiaoxi received?"

Zhao Changxing's heart moved and remembered a possibility again. But now there is too little information and there is really no way to make further speculations. So he could only put this idea aside first.

But no matter what, at this stage, this is actually not important. The important thing is that Zhao Changxing has finally initially proved his speculation. This speculation means an amazing possibility that may change the fate of human civilization.

——If the internal pressure of this asteroid is high and there is a large amount of gas, then is there a possibility that humans can open a channel for gases with higher pressures within to let them vent?

You should know that the ejected gas also has reverse thrust. However, through this reverse thrust, can we obtain the power to change the orbit of this asteroid so that it will not hit the planet Sedna again?

It is like a balloon filled with air inside. A hole is suddenly opened, and the balloon itself will inevitably fly away under the reaction force of the gas.

Not to mention pushing it away completely, even if it is to circulate around Sedna Star and become a satellite of Sedna Star, as long as it doesn't collide with it.

This possibility made Zhao Changxing's heart suddenly feel hot.
Chapter completed!