It's a metaphor for Brexit, or something.
The cotton plants that sprouted on the moon's far side aboard China's Chang'e 4 lander are dead, done in by the bitter cold of the lengthy lunar night, GBTimes reported today (Jan. 16).
But the canister apparently does not have a battery-powered heater, so the onset of the lunar night over the weekend spelled doom for the cotton sprouts, GBTimes reported. "Liu Hanlong, head of the experiment at Chongqing University, said at a Chongqing government press conference on Tuesday that the temperature inside the 1-liter-capacity canister had reached minus 52 degrees Celsius [minus 62 degrees Fahrenheit] and the experiment had ended" after 212.75 hours, Andrew Jones wrote in the GBTimes story.
https://www.space.com/43025-china-moon-mission-plants-dead.html
Let me get this straight. They went to moon to grow plants and could not have anticipated this would happen?
ReplyDeleteSomething wrong with this story.
No, they knew this would happen. As it says, this was an extra experiment, not a core project. Also :
ReplyDeletehttps://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-17/change-probe-china-cotton-seeds-moon-dies/10723336
Professor Xie Gengxin of Chongqing University, who led the design of the space experiment, told Chinese newspaper Inkstone his team had anticipated the plant's short lifespan. He explained: "Life in the canister would not survive the lunar night."
Got it. Thanks.
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