There’s a total lunar eclipse coming. How will these 2 solar-powered moon probes survive the darkness?
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The total lunar eclipse will drown from March 13 to 14 in the moon’s tasks to dark. What will happen to the lunar spacecraft? | Credit: NASA’s conceptual photo laboratory
When the moon is located under the Earth on Thursday night until Friday (13-14 March), observers will be dealt with opinions “Blood Moon” the total lunar eclipse. But given that the lunar spacecraft is working with solar powered, how can they survive when it is cut from the sun?
Nasa Cunna reconnaissance orbit (LRO), which has been around the moon since 2009, will become time to strike the gates.
“The scientific LRO tools and some components that the spacecraft do not need during the overall eclipse of the moon,” said Noah Petro, the scientist of the LRO project at the Guudard Space Center in NASA, in an interview with Space.com.
The danger is a LRO battery. Solar spacecraft and spend the daylight part of its orbit for about two hours around moon Using solar matches to charge the battery on board the plane, which you depend on during Nightside of the Moon. However, NASA revealed that by 2018, the LRO battery efficiency has already deteriorated to 70 % as a result of continuous shipping.
During the total eclipse from 13 to 14 March, LRO will be in the dark-either on the night side of the moon or under the front earth-for 5 hours, 48 minutes. This is a relatively long time, but Petro is sure that the LRO battery can keep the spacecraft alive.
“Before the eclipse enters, we will carry the battery to the maximum stinginess,” he said. To prevent great drain on its strength, each scientific tool is closed on the spacecraft. During the eclipse, the temperature inside the spacecraft can decrease to 23 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 5 ° C), but for the wide -angle camera in the spacecraft, which is less protection, you can feel cold such as minus 22 Fahrenheit (minus 30 ° C). So steps will be taken in advance to ensure that everything is as pink as possible.
“Because being in the dark also cools the satellite, we will heat the tools and spacecraft before the eclipse,” Petro said. “This guarantees the minimum pulling energy added from the heaters during the eclipse while maintaining the components of the spacecraft within the regular operating temperatures and tools is much higher than the survival limits.”
Reserves taken for Lunar eclipse This was not always radical. During the previous eclipse, LRO managed to maintain one tool. It is called Diviner, a radiological scale that discovers thermal emissions from the moon to study how the surface temperature rises and cools throughout the moon’s day.
The total lunar eclipse stages show that the moon gradually turns red as the Earth’s shadow enters. | Credit: Hassan Ammar/AFP via Getty Images
The idea behind keeping it operating it during the lunar eclipse was to study how the moon’s surface is cooled while it is under the Earth, which provides information about the formation of materials and its size in the moon’s regional moon, which consists of rocks, small molecules and dust. The size and composition of rocks affects the speed of their cooling.
Petro said: “Diviner measurements during the previous eclipse, especially the targeted areas, allow a look at the surface of the upper moon,” Petro said.
During the total lunar eclipse on October 8, 2014, Diviner specifically noticed a hole called kepler and “cold spot” during the night. In particular, cold spots are areas around some pits where Diviner found unusually cold night temperatures.
In addition to determining the distribution of the size of the material that was removed from the hole during the effect, Diviner found that the “cold spot” was warmer than the surrounding material. This indicates that the vertical layers of the materials inside the lunar regional may be more complicated than it was previously believed, to allow them to radiate heat at a different rate from his surroundings.
What will happen to the Blue Ghost?
Lander Lunar Lunar from Firefly Aerospace seized this shot from its shadow on the moon immediately after landing on March 2, 2025. Credit: Firefly Aerospace
Lro is not the only active lunar mission. Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost, a special task for the second soft land on the moon, Fell In Mare Crisium on March 2 as part of NASA Moon Tourning Services program.
Related to: Lander monitored a special blue ghost on the surface of the moon by the lunar NASA (image)
Blue ghost carries 10 NASA experiences Designed to investigate the surface of the moon. Like Lro, it is solar powered. Blue Ghost is designed to last only during the day, which is about two weeks slowly Moon. In fact, Blue Ghost fell in time to see sunrise. Once the sun sets, the Lander batteries will decrease, their heaters will be stopped, and the cold will be killed on the night of the moon by mid -March.
But will Blue Ghost remain alive for a long time? The sunset comes from the Blue Ghost’s Landing on March 16, but the total lunar eclipse is two days ago and will drown in the shade.
The task can survive for several hours on the moon’s night on battery energy alone. The lunar eclipse will last 6 hours, 3 minutes in general, but only 65 minutes of that will be in the entirety, under the so -called dark dark shade. The rest of the eclipse will be in the shadow of Penumbral, where some sunlight reaches the surface.
In fact, the Firefly Aerospace team is very confident that Blue Ghost will survive to the extent that they intend to take high -resolution images of the event from the moon while Lander is under the Earth. In other words, on the surface of the moon, the Blue Ghost will see the total The solar eclipse!
So, while looking at the moon while the Earth’s shadow moves on the night of 13-14 March, avoid thinking about the only weak space investigations that should fight through darkness in order to survive.
