Posted on Tuesday, January 28, 2014
The Moon seems like a far-away and cold place as seen from the Earth, but it isn't so always.
During the two-week long day the Lunar surface at equator can reach temperatures up to 390 Kelvins, making it a quite hot environment.
However two weeks there's night, when temperature drops to about 100 Kelvins, meaning that any spacecraft on the Lunar surface has to be able to live through both the hot day and cool night.
Right now there's on spaccraft on the Moon for which the life there seems to be getting dangerous. The Chinese Lunar Rover named Yutu that landed on the Moon on December 14th and has since then survived for two lunar days and one night, however as the second lunar night is getting nearer the spacecraft doesn't seem to be wanting to go into it's hibernation mode because of a mechanical anomaly. The hibernation is important for the rover in order to preserve power and see yet another day.
Let's hope everything will work out for Yutu.
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