Temperature profiles in the subsurface using different node-spacing approaches and a different number of nodes. (a): temperature distribution in the upper 1 m of regolith. The regular node spacing with 80 nodes (red) cannot resolve the upper temperature distribution and it propagates inaccurate temperature estimates to the subsurface, leading to a profile that is vastly different than the other three approaches. The two exponential node spacing approaches, 40 nodes (blue) and 29 nodes (black), and the irregular 29-nodes spacing approach (green) follow the same trend and provide similar temperatures. (b): same profiles as in (a), but for the upper 5 cm of regolith. The regularly spaced profile (red) is too poorly resolved close to the surface to model the temperature distribution. The other three approaches show a similar trend with the two exponential approaches showing smoother and higher resolved temperature profiles than the previously chosen irregular node spacing.