Yutu snoozes, but control problems remain
Print Edition
China’s lunar rover Yutu entered its third planned dormancy on Saturday, with the mechanical control issues that might cripple the vehicle still unresolved.
The State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence (SASTIND) said yesterday that Yutu carried out only fixed point observations during its third lunar day, equivalent to about two weeks on Earth.
Its radar, panorama camera and infrared imaging equipment are functioning normally, but the control issues that have troubled the rover since January persist, it said.
The rover went into sleep mode on Saturday afternoon.
During the lunar night, there is no sunlight to power Yutu’s solar panels. In this period, the rover is expected to stay in a power-off mode and communication with Earth is cut.
Yutu, named after the pet rabbit of the lunar goddess Chang’e in Chinese mythology, touched down on the moon’s surface on December 15, some hours after lunar probe Chang’e-3 landed.
Yutu was designed to roam the lunar surface for at least three months to survey the moon’s geological structure and surface substances and look for natural resources. But problems emerged before it entered its second dormancy on the moon on January 25 as the lunar night fell. According to SASTIND, the mechanic control abnormality occurred due to the “complicated lunar surface.”
Experts feared that it might never function again, but Yutu “woke up” on February 12, two days behind schedule.
The awakening was announced online by an unverified user named “Jade Rabbit Lunar Rover,” which posts first-person accounts in the “voice” of the probe, and has gone viral on weibo.com.
“Hi, anybody there?” it asked, prompting over 60,000 reposts and 40,000 comments within two hours.
Its latest post yesterday featured a picture of the Chang’e-3 probe taken by Yutu during its third lunar day and the caption of “zzZ”, implicating the lunar rover had gone to sleep.
“Remember to wake up on time, you lazy bones,” one person wrote in reply.
Meanwhile, the Chang’e-3 probe also entered dormancy in the early hours of yesterday, after carrying out observations of celestial bodies and the Earth’s plasmasphere.
China is the third country to soft-land on the moon after the US and Soviet Union. Chang’e-3 is part of the second phase of its lunar program, which includes orbiting, landing and returning to Earth.
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