Can the moon vessel survive in the darkness of the lunar eclipse?

When the Moon is immersed in the shadow of the Earth from the night of March 13 to March 14, astronomical lovers can admire the full lunar eclipse, also known as the “blood moon”. But due to the Moon spacecraft operating by solar power, can they survive when the power supply is interrupted? For NASA’s trajectory (LRO) aircraft that have been around the moon since 2009, this is the time to save energy, according to Space.

“LRO scientific equipment and some parts where the spacecraft does not need to be disconnected throughout the full lunar eclipse,” said Noah Petro, a project scientist in LRO mission at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

The risk lies in LRO battery. The spacecraft operates thanks to the solar power and rotates in the two -hour trajectory around the moon, using solar cells to fully charge the battery. LRO relies on this battery when flying over the dark part of the moon. However, in 2018, NASA revealed that LRO’s battery performance has dropped to 70% due to continuous charging.

During the total lunar eclipse on March 13 – 14, LRO will be in darkness for 5 hours 48 minutes. It was a relatively long time, but Petro believed that LRO’s battery packing could help the spacecraft survive. “Before entering the lunar eclipse, we will charge the battery to the maximum capacity,” he said.

To prevent exhausted electricity, all scientific equipment on the spacecraft will turn off. During the period, the temperature inside the spacecraft may drop to -5 degrees Celsius, but for wide -angle cameras is less protected, the heat level may drop to -30 degrees C. Therefore, NASA needs to take steps before the steps to ensure the ship is still working well.

“Because in the darkness also cooling the satellite, we will heat the equipment and spacecraft before the lunar eclipse. This ensures the minimum power consumption from the heater in the lunar eclipse while maintaining the parts of the spacecraft in the normal operating temperature and the equipment will above the survival limit.”

In previous lunar eclipse, LRO still turned on a device called Diviner. It is a radiation that detects heat emissions from the moon surface to study how the surface warms up and colds in a day. The turning on this device in the lunar eclipse helps to study the cold moon surface when in the shadow of the Earth, providing information about the composition and distribution of the size of the material in the soil layer made of stone, small particles and dust.

LRO is not the only moon mission in operation. Blue Ghost, the second private task, landed gently on the Moon, landing in the Mare Crisium area on March 2 in the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. The Blue Ghost of Firefly Aerospace carrying 10 NASA experiments is designed to learn the moon surface. Like LRO, the ship operates by solar power. Blue Ghost is only designed to survive during the day, equivalent to two weeks of Earth. When the sun sets, the amphibious ship’s battery will run out of electricity, its heater will turn off and the cold of the moon night will cause the ship to die in mid -March.

The time when the sun set in the landing area of ​​the Blue Ghost will take place on March 16, but the total lunar eclipse takes place two days earlier also causing the ship to sink in the dark. The ship can survive a few hours on the night of the moon based only on the battery. The lunar eclipse lasts 6 hours 3 minutes but the whole phase is only 65 minutes. In the remaining time, part of the sunlight can be transmitted to the moon surface. The team of Firefly Aerospace believes that Blue Ghost will survive the lunar eclipse and take high resolution of the event from the Moon surface when it is in the shadow of the Earth.