One Small Step

In article ,
Pat Flannery wrote:
Here's a good one for you- since they had that radioisotope heater
hanging off the back of the Lunakhod, did they use is as a RTG for
trickle power supply during the lunar night?

Not clear. The discussion of the rover design in Siddiqi's book suggests
it, but the wording is not absolutely clear (possibly because the sources
he was working from weren't clear) that it's *electrical* power rather
than thermal power that is being discussed.

You would think you would
want to keep a small fan running to circulate the warmed helium.

Small jobs like that, you might be able to do from batteries (which
Lunokhod did have). It's only heating that really requires ridiculous
amounts of battery capacity.
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