Posted on 01/15/2019 3:46:21 PM PST by BenLurkin
The China National Space Agency's Chang'e 4 lander is exploring the mysterious side of our lunar neighbor that faces away from Earth. It also had some unusual guests on board and -- in a first for the moon -- one of them sprouted.
Xinhua announced the sprout Tuesday and posted a series of progress images covering the course of nine days and showing a seedling reaching up inside the habitat. The experiment didn't last long
A team from Chongqing University in China developed a sealed biosphere habitat stocked with seeds, fruit fly eggs and yeast that it hoped would create a mini-ecosystem. The cotton seed was the only one to sprout. The experiment also contained potato and oilseed rape seeds.
The experiment's chief designer, Xie Gengxin of Chongqing University, told Xinhua that life inside the canister would not survive the lander's first lunar night, which started on Sunday. The moon's nighttime period lasts for about two Earth weeks.
The temperature plummets during the lunar night. NASA says the moon's temperatures near its equator can dive to -238 Fahrenheit (-150 Celsius). Chang'e 4 is located in the Von Karman crater in the moon's southern hemisphere. The lander is in sleep mode during the lunar night.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnet.com ...
...roops...
The experiment’s chief designer, Xie Gengxin of Chongqing University, told Xinhua that life inside the canister would not survive the lander’s first lunar night, which started on Sunday.
Xinhua, you are fired.
This will not stop China from claiming the moon as their national territory.
Can’t wait to hear about how in the 6th century some Chinese guy did some random thing that makes such a claim legitimate.
(This is me rolling my eyes at the arrogance of the Chinese)
The radiation hitting it must be intense.
At reast their runar rander works.
The problem with Chinese lunar landers is that after touchdown an hour later you want to take off and do it again.
...it’s on the utra side (the dark side)....
..never to be heard or seen again
It’s hard to get excited about an unmanned probe, even on the dark side of the moon. Wake me up when they send a man to the moon. Given the computer-assisted guidance systems developed since Neil Armstrong’s moon walk, this should be much easier to do today. And yet - despite the hoopla - the Chinese have yet to replicate what NASA did during the Flintstone era of computing.
This reminds me of a song by Pink Floyd.
What they need is a solar powered mobile cement factory that roams the lunar surface, scoops up regolith, and craps out structural building blocks of known engineering properties. Water might be the limiting factor here.
the radiation hitting that little rape seed will turn it into an Audrey (Little Shop of Horrors)
The cotton seed was the only one to sprout
= = =
So the Chinese want to grow cotton.
And then import ‘folks’ to pick it.
RASSSIST!!!
we’ll see if their lander wakes up after lunar night.
If you have a furnace that is hot enough...
*ping*
Is this the formula for Godzilla?
In fairness, neither has NASA, at least in terms of human lunar landings.
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