Extreme cold is merciless on machinery. Fluids thicken to useless goo. Rubber seals stiffen and crack.

The problems pile up as the temperature falls. Metal becomes brittle, and wires contract. Batteries stop working, adhesives stop sticking and LCD screens go black as their liquid crystal freezes solid.

And that's just here on Earth.

When NASA's new lunar rover lands on the moon's south pole next year, it will encounter a whole new kind of cold.

Temperatures there hover around minus 280 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 173 degrees Celsius). In the permanent shadows of polar craters, it can fall to minus 388 F (minus 233 C).

For context, Antarctica's Vostok Station holds the record for the lowest temperature ever recorded on this planet: minus 128.6 F (minus 89.2 C), recorded July 21, 1983. A typical day on the moon is about 150 degrees colder than the coldest it has ever been on Earth.

Previous rovers for the moon and Mars—which is also cold, averaging minus 80 F—have been equipped with built-in heaters that switch on at the start of the lunar or Martian day and take several hours to warm enough for the machines to begin their daily tasks.

A frozen valve forced a postponement on Monday of the first test flight of SpaceX's Starship, the most powerful rocket ever built, designed to send astronauts to the Moon, Mars and beyond.

Liftoff of the gigantic rocket was called off less than 10 minutes ahead of the scheduled launch because of a pressurization issue in the first-stage booster, SpaceX said.

The private space company continued with the countdown in what it called a "wet dress rehearsal," stopping the clock with 10 seconds to go, just before the massive engines on the booster were to have been ignited.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk said a frozen pressure valve forced a scrub of the launch, which had been planned for 8:20 am Central Time (1320 GMT) from Starbase, the SpaceX spaceport in Boca Chica, Texas.