When Hawke got close to the sun, he realised that his previous experience of the sun was too superficial.
Only from the top of books, one could never appreciate the power of the sun.
Now, Hawke was 60 million kilometres from the Sun. It is still beyond the orbit of Mercury.
At a distance of sixty million kilometres, even Jupiter would be no more than a bright spot at such a distance, unable to see any details clearly. But the Sun at this distance is as big as a millstone.
There is no air here, so there is no diffuse reflection. A huge ball of fire hangs in the middle of the dark sky. There was endless light and heat emanating from it. Hawke tested the temperature of the heat shield, which was about four hundred degrees.
Powerful streams of high-energy charged particles blew out from above the sun, more than ten times stronger than what had been tested on Earth.
"This must be the result of Jupiter's influence." Hawke made a guess, then decisively stopped the thought of continuing his approach and fine-tuned his orbit to an orbit around.
This was the closest Hawk had been to the sun since birth, and probably in his entire life. Hawke would not have come to such a dangerous place if it had not been for this time to accelerate by the sun's gravity.
The difference between the mass of the sun and Sky Court IV was not too great, and the two served as a good analogy. With nothing else to do, Hawke allocated a few points out of his cpu and began to run the data he had collected on the sun.
This data helped Hawke to make a rough guess about the situation in the Sky Court IV star system in order to decide what he would do once he reached the Sky Court IV star system.
Hawke's ionisation programme was also officially launched at this time. In the previous phase of collection, Hawke had collected a total of about nine hundred tonnes of water. These nine hundred tonnes of water will all be transformed into hydrogen and oxygen, which will become Hawke's fuel during the approximately four-month journey around the sun.
With 900 tons of fuel, Hawk had already exceeded his highest reserve level, and with plenty of fuel, Hawk finally tried his hand at being a rich man. tinkering with the details of the ship.
Everything was looking up. It was at this time that Hawke's mind, at last, relaxed.
The four months passed in a flash. Hawke's position, running from this side of the sun to the other. As the ship moved further and further away from the sun, the speed of the ship would slowly decrease under the sun's gravity. But since the intention was to break free of the sun's gravity, it was natural that Hawke could not fail to prepare early.
In fact, about a month and a half ago Hawke began a slow acceleration, bringing the ship's relative speed from twenty kilometres per second to forty kilometres per second, and it was still accelerating. It is expected that after crossing Mars' orbit, Hawk will reach a speed of 60 kilometres per second, surpassing that of Voyager 1, the fastest human craft before it.
After that, Hawk will travel at this speed until it reaches 100 million kilometres from Saturn, before starting to slow down and eventually landing on Titan.
Everything is as familiar as it was on the way in. Skimming once more at a distance of 30,000 kilometres from Mars, Hawke was overcome with emotion as he looked at the planet that had suffered so much and had provided him with a strong shelter.
"Well, it's finally time to cross the asteroid belt and take a new step!" Hawke's heart was full of confidence.
The last time he had intended to cross the asteroid belt, he had been forced to change his orbit by the big event of the Moon-Wood collision, but fortunately Hawke had not suffered a fatal blow. Like an undefeatable little man, Hawke regained sustenance in Earth orbit and, like Hu Han San, returned once again.
This time, there was no one left to stop Hawke.
There are indeed many asteroids in the asteroid belt, estimated to total a million or more, but spread out over a huge amount of space, their density is questionable.
In fact, if you don't deliberately choose your target, you won't find any asteroids at all as you pass through the asteroid belt, which appears to be as empty as the rest of the universe. So, as long as you are not very unlucky, you don't usually have to worry about being attacked by an asteroid here.
Hawk passed through the asteroid belt unscathed, accelerated to sixty-five kilometres per second by Jupiter's gravity, and hurtled towards his destination at full speed.
Here, the distance to the Sun is about 300 million kilometres. It is about 480 million kilometres from the orbit of Jupiter and about 1.1 billion kilometres from the orbit of Saturn.
Fortunately, Jupiter and Saturn, as well as Hawke, were now on the same side of the Sun, otherwise, with less gravitational acceleration from Jupiter, it would have taken Hawke a little longer.
In the blink of an eye, nearly three more months had passed. The distance between Hawk and Jupiter had been reduced to less than 30 million kilometres.
Looking at Jupiter which was getting closer and closer, Hawke started to think about a very important question.
That was, whether to go and have a look around Jupiter.
Hawke had finished calculating the data obtained from Jupiter and was currently at the stage where he needed to experiment to verify it. Until new data was obtained from the experiments, it was impossible for Hawke to go any further in his research on nuclear fusion. Although Hawke was 90% sure that the final answer lay in his hypothesis, there was always a slight chance of an accident.
What if, at this point, he could get a little more data by observing Jupiter up close? Wouldn't it be a little more certain? After all, reaching Saturn and trying to come back to Jupiter would not be a simple matter.
But the dangers also speak for themselves. A year has passed since the Jupiter-Moon impact, but a year is a twinkle in the eye on astronomical scales, and the effects of such a huge impact are unlikely to settle down any time soon. Maybe there were countless pieces of moons flying around in Jupiter's orbit, or maybe Jupiter's magnetic field had mutated, causing the ship's instruments to fail.
Hawke gritted his teeth and frowned, but decided that it was time to take a look.
Having a strong curiosity and desire to know is a basic quality of a scientist. And as the most brilliant scientist of all time, Hawke undoubtedly had a curiosity strong enough to kill 500 cats. There were two reasons for going to Jupiter, one was that going to Jupiter to observe it up close would really help Hawke's research on fusion technology, and the second reason was that Hawke was really curious and really wanted to see what Jupiter was really like now.
"Even if we're going to see it, we have to think about safety for a bit. Um ... there's about five more days before we reach Jupiter, so while you're at it, reinforce and thicken the ship's radiation shield again ... Also, only skim 200,000 kilometres from Jupiter, no closer. Um, really, never get any closer."
Hawke mumbled silently, directing the eight robots - whose number had increased by five during the months of the journey - to begin once again reinforcing and thickening the ship's radiation shield, while turning on the Geiger counter, the magnetometer, the radar anti-impact system, the At the same time, the Geiger counter, magnetometer, radar anti-impact system, optical detection system and several other systems were all turned up to maximum power, and the only laser gun was brought out, ready to smash any meteorite chunks that could not be avoided.
Having made all the preparations, Hawke looked silently at the growing Jupiter, tense with anticipation.
Jupiter's trademark streaks had disappeared, Hawke knew, muddled by the moon's impact. Even Jupiter's famous Great Red Spot, which had been hit by the pooling of the Jupiter-Moon collision, had disappeared from sight.
Closer ... closer ... The distance between Hawk and Jupiter has closed to two million kilometres. This distance is already quite close, but Hawk is still flying forward without hesitation, all the way, and in about eight hours Hawk and Jupiter will draw closest to each other, when they will be about two hundred thousand kilometres apart, and then away from Jupiter.
The best observation time was only sixteen hours. The instruments that Hawke was carrying were at maximum power, observing Jupiter with all their might and trying to get as much data from it as possible.
All these instruments took up less than thirty percent of the computing power of the central computer. Hawke had plenty of energy to stare blankly at Jupiter to satisfy his curiosity.
"Really ... it's spectacular." Hawke muttered.
Behind Hawk, there were the spectacular rings of Jupiter, with faint glimpses of Io and Io IV. Ahead of them, was the giant-sized Jupiter.
Jupiter now has an overall chaotic yellow-brown colour. From time to time a huge cyclone appeared on it that could almost be seen with the naked eye. Hawke had no doubt about their power; if Hawke's ship were thrown into it, it would probably take less than a fraction of a second to be torn to pieces.
At the poles, there were countless glorious auroras flying around, countless times more massive than those above Earth.
With the huge Jupiter as a backdrop, Hawke's ship, was like a tiny mosquito.
Eight hours had passed, and the distance between Hawke and Jupiter was now 400,000 kilometres. The nearest distance, two hundred thousand kilometres, was soon to come.
Jupiter had taken up Hawke's entire field of vision. It was as if Hawke could see the countless violent and raging thunderstorms of lightning on Jupiter. The lightning on Jupiter, any one of them, was hundreds of times more violent than the most powerful lightning on Earth. Long streaks of lightning raged through Jupiter's clouds, cutting through the long sky and releasing unparalleled energy ...
Such a sight made Hawke's blood feel like it was going to boil just thinking about it.
Two hundred thousand kilometres.
There was a peculiar palpitation transmitted into Hawke's spirit. With a flash of intelligence, Hawke snapped out of his disorientation. Immediately afterwards, Hawke felt a surge of data that made his heart almost stop beating.
"Why has the radiation intensity suddenly increased so much? Why did the shell temperature suddenly increase to two hundred degrees? Why are the instruments suddenly all interfered with?"
Hawk roared in anger and immediately began his examination.
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I'm sorry, but I've got things to do today and Saturday and Sunday, so I can only do one shift. Will resume normal updates next Monday with two chapters a day.
Also, if you look okay, please leave a little footprint, collection recommendation, whatever! A little bit of your support is the biggest support for me, I would like to thank you!