Summer in moon, Chandrayaan enters a wintry phase

BANGALORE, INDIA: As winter is all set to envelope the Indian subcontinent, the prestigious moon mission of India, Chandrayaan-1, is ironically facing the heat in the moon.

Since the summer heat is heavy in the moon, the hottest temperatures it has yet faced, the mission has been forced it to take a summer break, the New Scientist reported quoting Chandrayaan project director Mylswamy Annadurai.

He said the Chandrayaan is currently over the sunlit side of the moon, a place where spacecraft are expected to heat up because they receive energy directly from the Sun as well as infrared radiation given off by theMoon.

The spacecraft is currently facing external temperatures of 100 degrees Celsius, and cooling systems aim to maintain the spacecrafts interior at around 40 degrees C, New Scientist reported Annadurai as saying.

Scientists expect the temperature to stabilize by the end of December and the mission is supposed to wake up from the ‘hibernation’ by the middle of January 2009.