Relief for space mission as Yutu ‘back to life’
Print Edition
China’s moon rover Yutu is “awake” at last after its second lunar night but experts are still trying to find out the cause of its technical problems, a lunar probe program spokesman said yesterday.
“Yutu has come back to life,” said Pei Zhaoyu, after a period in which the rover’s inactivity had threatened the completion of its mission.
Pei said Yutu, or Jade Rabbit, had returned to a state where it can receive signals as normal. But experts are still working to verify the cause of some mechanical control issues.
Yutu was designed to roam the lunar surface to survey the moon’s geological structure and surface substances and look for natural resources. It was expected to work on the moon for at least three months.
But problems emerged before the rover entered its second dormancy period on January 25. Experts feared it might not be able to function again given the extremely low temperatures during the lunar night.
Minus 180 degrees
One night on the moon is about 14 days on Earth, during which the temperature falls below minus 180 degrees Celsius. During the lunar night, there is no sunlight to provide power to Yutu’s solar panel. The rover stays in a power-off mode and communication with Earth is cut off.
Yutu entered its first period of dormancy on December 26 with the arrival of the mission’s first lunar night, and woke up on January 11. It was originally scheduled to wake from the second lunar night on February 10.
“Now that it is still alive, the rover stands a chance of being saved,” Pei said.
On Sina Weibo, the “Yutu Lunar Rover” account, which details the developments of the mission from a first-person perspective, posted its first update since the mechanical problems.
“Hi, anybody there?” it asked in a post, which prompted some 60,000 reposts and 40,000 comments within two hours.
“We are all here,” one user replied.
“Hold on there, the whole country’s got your back,” another wrote.
Some joked about the rover being a “foodie” waking up for rice dumplings, a must-have delicacy for today’s Lantern Festival. “Which would you prefer? Chocolates or rice dumplings?” asked one user, as this year’s Lantern Festival shares the day with Valentine’s Day.
Fans overseas posted messages on Twitter. “Makes me want to dance a jig,” one user wrote minutes after the official @XHNews account posted the news that Yutu had woken up.
“PRC engineers & scientists should be proud of their excellent work, and congratulations to them from all of humankind,” jeffsonstein said.
Lunar probe mission failures are not rare. In April 1962, US lunar probe Ranger 4 crashed into the dark side of the moon after equipment failure prevented it from returning pictures and scientific data.
Yutu touched down on the moon’s surface on December 15, several hours after lunar probe Chang’e-3 had soft-landed on the moon.
Chang’e-3 is part of the second phase of China’s lunar program, which includes orbiting, landing and returning to Earth. It follows the success of the Chang’e-1 and Chang’e-2 missions in 2007 and 2010.
China is the third country in the world to soft-land on the moon after the United States and the former Soviet Union.
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