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BEIJING (XINHUA) – The night on the moon is dark and cold, but Chinese scientists do not know exactly how cold it can be.
The Chang-e-4 probe, which made the very first soft landing on the other side of the moon, will help them measure moon temperatures.
A lunar day equals 14 days on Earth and a lunar night has the same duration. Temperatures vary enormously between day and night on the moon.
Scientists estimate that the maximum temperature of the day could reach 127 ° C, while the night at night could fall to minus 183 ° C.
In 2013, China launched Chang-e-3, the first spacecraft in the country to land on the moon. The scientific instruments of his lander still work after more than 60 lunar nights in the last five years.
"It was a success, but Chang's e-3 was designed based on foreign temperature data," said Ms. Zhang He, executive director of the Chang-e-4 probe project, China Academy. of Space Technology.
"Without our own data on lunar temperatures, we do not know how cold a lunar night can be," Zhang said.
"Chang-e-4 will measure temperature differences between day and night on the moon, helping scientists evaluate the properties of lunar soil," she said.
Tan Mei consultant of the Chinese Academy of Space Technology said that Chang-e-4 would switch to a "sleep mode" during the lunar night due to lack of solar energy, and relied on the radioisotope heat source, a collaboration between Chinese and Russian scientists, keep warm. "We need to turn heat into energy to run thermometry to measure lunar surface temperatures at night."
The LG is equipped with dozens of temperature data collectors, and the data collected at night will be transmitted once the sensor wakes up during the lunar day, said Li Fei's designer from the China Academy of Space Technologies. .
The chief designer of the Chang-e-4 probe, Mr. Sun Zezhou, of the Chinese Academy of Space Technology, said the probe would get first-hand data by directly measuring lunar soil temperatures , the surface of the probe and its results. key interior equipment during the lunar night.
Used for the first time in a Chinese spacecraft, the Chang-e-4 thermoelectric isotope generation technology is a prototype for future explorations in deep space, Sun said.
NASA's Curiosity rover is also adopting this energy technology, freeing it from the sunshine, sand and dust restrictions that hindered Opportunity and Spirit from its predecessors, he said.
"It is a technology that we must master if we want to go to the polar regions of the Moon or in far spaces further than Jupiter, where solar energy can not be used as a source of energy." main energy, "he said.
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