Chen Ming's consciousness can control the operation of the spacecraft.

Naturally, it can also control the equipment inside the spacecraft.

Under Chen Ming's conscious control, the asteroid scanning detector quickly located all asteroids containing minerals on its own device screen.

Although the number is not large, it is enough for Chen Ming to familiarize himself with the spacecraft equipment.

Under normal circumstances, this part of the spacecraft's system will plan its own route to collect minerals based on the material priority set in advance and the different mineral content inside the asteroid.

But now Chen Ming was just doing an experiment, so he manually locked onto an asteroid that was half the size of a person.

Scans revealed that its interior contained a large amount of iron and some scattered associated minerals.

Among them are materials for repairing the landing module.

Chen Ming controlled the spacecraft to approach the asteroid and turned on the asteroid traction device.

After locking the target in advance, the asteroid was quickly towed and fixed in the direction of the spacecraft's working cabin.

The Type II mining laser started working, and the orange-yellow laser shot out from the side of the cabin quickly shattered it.

The traction equipment accurately collected the crushed high-quality ore into the spacecraft through the pipes connecting the inside and outside of the spacecraft, and sent it to the ship's smelting furnace.

Before the working chamber became hot due to smelting, Chen Ming very foresightedly changed into a partially charged protective suit.

Staying in the working cabin, watching the ship's smelting furnace gradually separate metal materials with different melting points and cast them into ingots.

Until the smelting is completed, the slag waste is discharged from the spacecraft.

Chen Ming stepped forward and immediately counted the gains from this mining operation.

36.5 kg of iron, 2 kg of whole zinc, 1.63 kg of copper, 0.9 kg of lead and 0.3 kg of aluminum.

The amount of aluminum Chen Ming most wanted was very small.

However, in the end, the furnace spit out about half a gram of gold for Chen Ming, which was considered a compensation.

Even if we don't consider the value of gold itself, its properties alone determine that it is indispensable in many electronic devices, which means that it is one of the materials Chen Ming needs to repair the spacecraft in the future.

Although there were not many of the most desired and high-value gains, this was just an asteroid that Chen Ming picked randomly and liked.

With such a rich variety of minerals on any asteroid, it's no wonder that companies would go to so much trouble to build space stations in such a haunted place.

At this glance, the problems behind the company's abandonment of the space station are even bigger.

Chen Ming did not dwell on the problem which he could not figure out just by thinking.

Instead, the smelting results were piled on a cart and placed in the storage compartment.

By the way, I plan to take inventory of the warehouse and find out how much stuff I have now.

However, before starting, Chen Ming suddenly had an idea and opened the panel of the storage compartment.

【Storage compartment】

[Space: 5*5*5]

[Storage room items: Metal minerals (iron, zinc, copper, etc.) totaling 135.15 kg, fuel (fusion fuel) totaling 492 kg]

[Items in the cold storage room: Food (packaged survival food) totaling 102.5 kg, sundries (Thorn Zerg strider corpses, Thorn Zerg strider egg corpses) totaling 72.6 kg,]

"Forehead……"

As Chen Ming expected, everything in the warehouse was written on the panel in great detail.

But when Chen Ming looked at the two items in the cold storage room, he suddenly didn't know what to say. He didn't expect that these were also counted as the items on his spaceship.

After thinking about it, Chen Ming decided to ignore them for now, as they might be useful in the future.

Chen Ming continued to look at other places on the panel.

For example, the large categories such as metal minerals and food in the storage area can be clicked to view the different materials contained in each category in more detail.

Chen Ming took a careful look and turned off the panel after he had a clear understanding of the material situation of his spaceship.

After all, this kind of thing is rare, and looking at an empty warehouse always makes people feel sad.

It is possible that the crew of the Iron Ore once sold what they mined directly to the space station, which is the company, and exchanged it for common currency to facilitate and quickly carry out the next mining activity.

Only a small amount of materials that might be used to repair the spacecraft were left.

It would not be a good idea for Chen Ming to cause trouble for the former crew members who might have died in some corner of the space station thirty years ago.

At least they left some materials for Chen Mingxiu to build weapons.

Moreover, with this mining spaceship, it would not be difficult for Chen Ming to start digging from scratch himself.

Three months may not be enough to go to the pirate space station, but it is more than enough for Chen Ming to mine in space and repair the spacecraft and land on the planet.

After completing the mining process, Chen Ming returned to the work cabin again.

The first mining experiment took less than an hour, and the dozen or so hours left before the planet rotated once couldn't be wasted.

The mining work of the spacecraft can be fully automated. You only need to set the type of mineral you need in the program, and the spacecraft can automatically navigate, automatically capture, automatically collect, and automatically smelt . Everything is fine except that it cannot automatically send the smelted minerals into the storage compartment.

Although there are not many asteroids containing minerals near the space station, it is not possible for the Iron Ore to collect them all in one day.

When Chen Ming is resting, he doesn't need to worry about the spacecraft flying too far and losing sight of the space station.

The real disadvantage of this system is that the overall fuel consumption of the spacecraft will be higher when mining.

But Chen Ming can afford these necessary expenses.

After setting the highest priority on the asteroid scanning detector for metal materials such as aluminum and gold that are urgently needed for repairing the spacecraft.

Chen Ming thought about whether there was anything else that needed him to do urgently.

I just wanted to familiarize myself with the overall structure of the spacecraft.

The spacecraft has a total of six cabins: the captain's cabin, engine cabin, work cabin, planting cabin, living cabin and storage cabin.

I had already checked the engine compartment when I put the fuel in it before, and there was nothing special that required attention.

Apart from a layer of dust, the living cabin is actually very tidy overall and can be lived in after a little cleaning.

After all, few people would want to sleep on the spacecraft after returning to a mining space station after working in space for a long time.

So at the end of a mining operation, the former crew members packed up the living cabin, left a new set of daily necessities for the next trip, and chose to find a place to live in the space station.

And then never came back.

The things that were left behind were a bargain for Chen Ming.

At this time, Chen Ming didn't care whether these daily necessities would expire in thirty years. After all, there was nothing in the entire space station that would not expire in thirty years. As long as they could be used, it was fine.

At this point, Chen Ming basically had a complete understanding of spacecraft.

But less than four hours had passed since Chen Ming woke up from the cryostasis.

Although he was a little tired mentally from having just repaired two machine guns, Chen Ming was not sleepy at all.

After thinking about it, Chen Ming now has two choices.

One is to use existing materials on the spacecraft to repair part of the spacecraft's external armor.

The spacecraft's armor is an aluminum-steel composite armor. Although aluminum comes first in the name, steel still accounts for the majority of it overall.

Compared to the steel material needed to repair the armor, the aluminum consumed now will not affect the subsequent repair of the landing module at all.

Another option is that Chen Ming can take this opportunity to take a look at what is in the two personal terminals he has.

(End of this chapter)