View from the Moon [credit: NASA]
Quoting from another report: 'Data from the Apollo missions had already revealed that the moon's sunlit surface can climb to 260 degrees Fahrenheit (127 degrees Celsius) during the day, and drop to minus 280 F (minus 173 C) at night. But all of that data comes from the side of the moon that faces Earth.' They think the answer to the mystery lies in the soil, which might raise other questions about the rotating sphere with no 'sides' that the lander is on.
China's lunar lander has woken from a freezing fortnight-long hibernation to find night-time temperatures on the moon's dark side are colder than previously thought, the national space agency said Thursday.
The Chang'e-4 probe—named after a Chinese moon goddess—made the first ever soft landing on the far side of the moon on January 3, a major step in China's ambitions to become a space superpower, says Phys.org.
Temperatures on the moon's surface plummeted to minus 190 degrees celsius (-310 degrees Fahrenheit) during the probe's first lunar night, which "was colder than scientists expected," the China National Space Administration (CNSA) said.
The night-time temperatures were recorded by the Chinese probe after it became active on Wednesday, following a slumber that lasted for about two earth weeks.
They were lower than those recorded by previous US missions to the near side of the moon, Zhang He, executive director of the Chang'e-4 mission, told Xinhua news agency.
"That's probably due to the difference in lunar soil composition between the two sides of the moon," he said.
Full report here.
from Climate Change Skeptic Blogs via hj on Inoreader http://bit.ly/2sYWhrr
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