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Archive for April 3, 2025

Ephemeris: 04/03/2025 – Blue Ghost’s two week long cold night

April 3, 2025 Comments off

This is Ephemeris for Thursday, April 3rd. Today the Sun will be up for 12 hours and 53 minutes, setting at 8:13, and it will rise tomorrow at 7:17. The Moon, 1 day before first quarter, will set at 3:23 tomorrow morning.

During the last lunar day the Blue Ghost Lander spend its time from little after sunrise until a little after sunset investigating the surface of the Moon at the lunar Sea of Crises or Mare Crisium. It wasn’t expected to survive the two-week-long night. It wasn’t expected to because it had no internal heating and at night the temperatures on the Moon can drop to down to minus 208° F, or a little bit more on the night side. During the day the temperature gets up to 250° which is pretty hot for some of the electronics. But what really kills a Lander is at night where they can’t recharge the batteries and the batteries drop in temperature to 200° below zero for two weeks. They generally do not survive.

The astronomical event times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (EDT, UT – 4 hours). Times will be different for other locations.

Addendum

The last little bit of sunlight provided by the setting sun photographed by the Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost Lander with the overexposed crescent Earth above, and Venus shining at a 1 o'clock position somewhat lower.
The last little bit of sunlight provided by the setting sun photographed by the Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Lander with the overexposed crescent Earth above, and Venus shining at a 1 o’clock position somewhat lower. The reason for these sunset and post sunset images is to find elusive dust suspended as the Moon’s “atmosphere” described by Eugene Cernan on the Apollo 17 mission. Credit: NASA/Firefly Aerospace via AP.
Categories: Ephemeris Program, Space exploration, The Moon Tags: