CCTV News: It is Mid-Autumn Festival again, a time of blooming flowers, a full moon, and family reunion. During this Mid-Autumn holiday, transportation was smooth, safe, and orderly, with an estimated total of over 600 million cross-regional passenger trips nationwide. Builders of a number of major national projects gave up reunions with their families and stayed at the front line of work, writing their own "different Mid-Autumn" with sweat and wisdom.

　Cross-regional passenger trips nationwide estimated to exceed 600 million during Mid-Autumn holiday

The three-day Mid-Autumn holiday ended on September 17. During the holiday, transportation was smooth, safe, and orderly, with an estimated total of over 600 million cross-regional passenger trips nationwide.

The reporter learned from the Ministry of Transport on September 17 that during the Mid-Autumn holiday, cross-regional passenger trips nationwide were estimated at over 205 million per day on average, up 28.2% from the same period in 2023. Among them, railway passenger volume is expected to exceed 42.99 million.

As the impact of Typhoon Bebinca weakened, passenger trains on lines such as the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway, Shanghai-Kunming High-Speed Railway, and Hangzhou-Shenzhen High-Speed Railway gradually resumed operation. Railway departments in many places operated themed tourist trains such as Mid-Autumn moon-viewing trains, promoting the integrated development of "railway + culture and tourism."

On the highway side, travel showed tidal characteristics, mainly short- and medium-distance self-driving. Among them, new energy vehicles accounted for more than half of trips. In areas with concentrated charging demand such as scenic spots and expressway service areas, transport and power departments provided service guarantees to ensure safe and orderly charging for vehicle owners.

During the Mid-Autumn holiday, civil aviation nationwide is expected to send a cumulative total of 5.1116 million passengers, with popular routes concentrated among the four major city clusters of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, the Yangtze River Delta, Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao, and Chengdu-Chongqing. As cross-border travel and homecoming reunion passenger flows overlapped, as of the early morning of the 17th, inbound and outbound passenger flows at Guangzhou Baiyun Airport port exceeded 10 million, up 19% year on year and a new high in nearly five years.

Yutu-2 lunar rover sends back latest images

The Yutu-2 lunar rover recently completed its 71st lunar day of work and sent back the latest images of the far side of the moon. Yutu-2 landed on the far side of the moon in January 2019 and has accumulated nearly 5 years and 9 months of working time, far exceeding its three-month design life. During its 71 lunar days of work, Yutu-2 not only obtained geological information such as the lunar surface topography, shallow structure, and material composition of the Chang'e-4 landing area, but also provided scientifically valuable data on scientific questions including the geological evolution of the far side of the moon and even the early evolution history of the lunar crust.

As of now, Yutu-2 has traveled 1,613 meters on the moon, making it the lunar rover that has worked the longest on the moon in the world.

　　Staying at posts during Mid-Autumn Festival; major projects steadily advanced

During the Mid-Autumn holiday, builders of a number of major national projects gave up reunions with their families and stayed at the front line of work, writing their own "different Mid-Autumn" with sweat and wisdom.

During this Mid-Autumn holiday, in the hinterland of the Taklamakan Desert, thousands of construction workers did not rest and accelerated the construction of a 10,000-mu photovoltaic desert-control project. They will cover sand dunes the size of 3,285 football fields with photovoltaic panels. After completion at the end of the year, it will provide 2.1 billion kWh of clean electricity per year to the surrounding chemical industry cluster.

In Qamdo, Tibet, at the site of the Datang Basu wind power project at an altitude of 5,200 meters, the minimum temperature has dropped below 10°C. Nearly 260 builders are overcoming the effects of high altitude and low temperatures to orderly advance wind turbine hoisting operations.

In Golmud, Qinghai, at the construction site of the national liquid air energy storage demonstration project, hundreds of large pieces of equipment are operating efficiently to accelerate the construction of this large "power bank" on the plateau.

During the holiday, major national energy projects in deserts, plateaus, and deep seas all advanced steadily.

In the deep sea more than 240 kilometers from land, the main production facilities of CNOOC's Liuhua Oilfield — Asia's first cylindrical offshore oil and gas processing plant, "Haikui No. 1," and Asia's first deepwater jacket platform, "Hai Ji No. 2" — have achieved mutual connection of subsea pipelines and cables and are counting down to production.

At the construction site of the second phase of "Deep Sea No. 1," China's first deepwater high-pressure gas field development project, workers are carrying out various inspections before the project goes into production.

　　China's 500-mm-aperture laser communication ground station completed and put into operation

China's independently developed 500-mm-aperture laser communication ground station was recently completed on the Pamir Plateau and officially put into operational service. Compared with traditional microwave communication, laser communication can increase spectrum resources and bandwidth by ten times to nearly a thousand times. The completion of the station will effectively improve satellite data transmission efficiency and provide important support for aerospace engineering missions such as remote sensing observation.

Import and export goods via China-Laos Railway exceed 10 million tons

The reporter learned from Kunming Customs that as of September 16, import and export goods cleared through the China-Laos Railway exceeded 10 million tons, with a value of more than 40 billion yuan. At present, the China-Laos Railway radiates outward to 17 countries including Laos and Thailand, and the categories of import and export commodities have expanded from more than 500 to more than 3,000.