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 ...
They should have put a dish of fried rice and chow mein on the moon.
Yeah, but then two hours later you'd have to return to the Moon.
Was that bit in “The Martian” about the stranded astronaut being the first to grow crops on Mars thereby qualifying him as a colonist based on real law?
Perhaps that cotton seed sprout gave Chine legal ownership rights to the moon.
Ping, can’t wait to hear from you.
Thanks fieldmarshaldj. They would have been able to keep the lights on if the danged rover just burned gasoline. See next message.
After telling a joke, I once asked my old g/f to give me a rimshot. She gave me a black eye.
They need to produce bean sprouts for future explorers.
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