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3 Years After : China’s Lunar Rover Has Traveled Over 1,000 Meters On Moon’s Far Side
3 years after, China’s lunar rover Yutu-2 (Jade Rabbit-2) has traveled over 1,000 meters on the far side of the moon.
China became the first country to ever land a spacecraft on the far side of the moon on January 3rd 2019.
Back in 2019, China became the first country to ever land a spacecraft on the far side of the moon. Its Chang’e-4 probe, launched on December 8, 2018, successfully landed on the moon’s far side on 3 January after a month and 238,855 miles journey.
Few days after successful landing on the moon, the missions two robots, the Chang’e 4 lander and the Yutu 2 rover, began exploring the 115-mile-wide Von Kármán Crater in the South Pole-Aitken Basin.
On Friday, The Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center of the China National Space Administration (CNSA) said that the rover has traveled 1,003.9 meters since it arrived three years ago on the far side of the moon.
The rover Yutu-2 has also worked much longer than its three-month design life, becoming the longest-working lunar rover on the moon. The scientific instruments on the Lander and Rover has also worked as planned.
Yutu-2 is currently in the mission’s 38th lunar day. A lunar day is equal to 14 days on Earth, and a lunar night is of the same length.
During the next lunar day, it is expected to take a closer look at a rock and detect the large impact crater behind it, said the CNSA center.
About The Moon’s Far Side (Or Dark Side)
The far side (or dark side) which the two robots are exploring is located on the side of the Moon that never faces Earth. It’s s region which no rover has ever landed on or been to.
The near side is what we see on the earth. It is also the region where the US NASA’s manned and unmanned spacecrafts landed on between 1959 and 1972.
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See Also : Nissan Unveils Moon Rover Prototype Jointly Developed With Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency
