Feasible colony on a close, tidally locked planet dark side?

Imagine a terrestrial planet extremely close to its star (assume it's identical to the Sun to make this simpler), maybe a bit like Kepler-78b but with an orbit of only about a week, for the purposes of a story. I'm thinking of an advanced alien species that has plopped a small base there so they observe the development of a nearby world (again, for sake of simplicity assume it's identical to earth in composition, size and orbit) and its species until their technological development allows them to be detected (it's a bit like the prime directive). The planet is generally like Mercury and the amount of inhabitants in the colony is minuscule, they can pull enough water, power and other stuff needed from the surrounding environment to keep themselves going for a long time.

What I want to know is what kind of challenges could make this idea unfeasible? First, how close to the star would a tidally locked world (assuming similar characteristics to mercury) have to be before the heat from the sun starts to bleed over onto the dark side and make it unfit for colonization? Could water be found on the dark side? Would there be particular effects from the star, ie tides, radiation, that could scupper this?

Related questions I was thinking about:

• Would this world be detectable from earth prior to the invention of the telescope?
• Would it be particularly difficult to study and image the surface using today's technology?
• Can I assume that a lander and orbiter would be totally out of the question for many decades too? Would the sun's influence somehow interfere with communication?

posted almost 9 years ago

Khwarezm‭

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