![]() The Chinese lander Chang'e 4 and its rover, Yutu 2 (Jade Rabbit 2), woke from dormant, power-saving modes at the end of January and beamed back data suggesting that temperatures there had plummeted to minus 310 F (minus 190 C), according to an Agence France-Presse report. 3 has recorded even colder temperatures during the long lunar night. When we have a new moon the dark side is completely facing the sun. The new Chinese mission that landed on the "dark" (read: far) side of the moon on Jan. Evidence Disproving Myth Hypothesis It is false that the 'dark side' of the moon never faces the sun. But all of that data comes from the side of the moon that faces Earth. Data from the Apollo missions had already revealed that the moon's sunlit surface can climb to 260 degrees Fahrenheit (127 degrees Celsius) during the day, and drop to minus 280 F (minus 173 C) at night. These periods are about two Earth-weeks long. This means that the side of the Moon that we see weighs just a bit more than the far side, so a few million years ago, we slowed the Moon down until it stopped turning relative to use and now shows us the same face all the time. ![]() But the moon is still spinning in order to constantly point one face at us, so it experiences days and nights from the varying sunlight. The FAR side of the Moon, (which is NOT always dark, but dark half the time, just like everything else,) is facing away from Earth because the Moon is tidally locked with Earth. Earth's moon is tidally locked to the planet, meaning that the same side of the moon faces us at all times.
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