China's moon rover dies of extreme old age, after two-and-a-half years China never fails in its high-profile scientific endeavours, so news that its Yutu lunar rover has stopped functioning is being spun as a triumph for its space program. Yutu – aka Jade Rabbit – landed on Luna in December 2013 but by January 2014 was reported DOA. By February 2014 the vehicle was revived, but had become …
done in by unexpected extremes in the Lunar climate
They didn't get the NASA and Russian data then on the temperatures, etc.? Or didn't believe it?
Still, they get a well done for landing it and get some science back for 2-1/2 years.. more or less. I hope the government feels the scientists are entitled to a beer...
in China?... beer ain't strong enough, I'd be expecting the least drunk of the engineers to have been utterly incoherent half an hour after the party started, with the possible exception of the oldest most experienced dude who'd have cunningly made everyone else down their glass while he sipped his....
乾杯...
This post has been deleted by its author
"Or didn't believe it?"
The extremes are even worse than can be simulated in an earthbound thermal vacuum chamber - and unlike spacebased stuff (which can rotate to spread the heat evenly), this kind of abuse tends to make things break in relatively short order just on uneven thermal expansion/contraction.
Damn these new-fangled businesses, stealing ideas from the early 20th century and executing them in much the same way!
Still, at least manufacturers aren't colluding to reduce the lifespan of products eh?
The sour grapes in this article is typical Register jocularity, but it might be worth reflecting on how long Britain's stationary Beagle robot lasted on Mars...
It's good going for their first landing, and most importantly this isn't a one-off and the Chinese have a solid program of continuing exploration, the next step being a sample-return mission to blast-off next year with a crewed mission scheduled for the middle of the 2020's.
Welllllll...
Considering it was their first go and all, and they apparently did it without consulting NASA or Russia, I'd say they had a good run, all told.
I mean, before we go crowing TOO loudly about Chinese idiocy in making a rover unprepared for the Lunar extremes, resulting in the vehicle being rendered merely immobile but still operable, we should all take a moment to remember that NASA are the idiots responsible for making a spacecraft unprepared for its component manufacturers and its programmers using differing mathematical units and thus turning from a lander into an impact probe.
Considering it was their first go and all, and they apparently did it without consulting NASA or Russia, I'd say they had a good run, all told.
Yep. The US and Russia had to practically machine gun the moon and Mars with probes before some started working. The Ranger program's first six (of nine) probes failed, and the Surveyor program had two of seven probes fail. It wasn't until the late 1960s that the US was getting regular successes (Lunar Orbiter program). Meanwhile, here's a table about the Soviet Luna Program. If I counted correctly, that's 43 missions and 29 failures.
China never fails in its high-profile scientific endeavours, so news that its Yutu lunar rover has stopped functioning is being spun as a triumph for its space program.
Well yeah, China, but then what was Europe's excuse for the "Good News!" headlines over last year's comet interception fiasco then?
Can't have it both ways: either space is hard to do and any level of success is to be lauded or we are playing to Dr Evil rules where failure isn't tolerated and only complete success is to be allowed to be trumpeted far and wide as "an achievement".
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
