posted 11-04-2019 07:25 AM               

Both the lander and the rover of the Chang'e-4 probe have ended their work for the 11th lunar day, and switched to dormant mode for the lunar night on Monday (Beijing time), according to the Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center of the China National Space Administration.

The rover is now located 218.11 meters northwest of the lander.

posted 01-07-2020 09:44 AM               

Ars Technica has published a gallery of some of the high resolution photographs.

The data was collected over a period of 12 lunar "days," or most of the last year.

The lander itself carried an excellent camera to image its surroundings. Extra sharp with a good color balance, the Terrain Camera was mounted at the top of the lander, with the ability to rotate 360 degrees. Before it died at the end of the first lunar day, this TCAM returned detailed images of the Moon. A helpful Twitter user in France, Techniques Spatiales, converted the camera's imagery into .png files, which can be found here.

posted 05-04-2020 10:44 AM               

Both the lander and the rover of the Chang'e-4 probe have ended their work for the 17th lunar day, and switched to dormant mode for the lunar night due to the lack of solar power, according to the Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center of the China National Space Administration.

posted 01-14-2025 01:00 PM               

The latest Chinese media report on the progress of Yutu-2, in September 2024, stated that the six-wheeled, solar powered rover had driven a total of 1,613 meters. However, imagery from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) reveals that Yutu-2 appears to have been stationary since March 2024.

"NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter images the rover roughly once a month and those images let me track rover motion," Phil Stooke, Professor Emeritus at the Institute for Earth and Space Exploration at University of Western Ontario, told SpaceNews. "Unfortunately, there has been very little motion in the last year and apparently none at all since March 2024."

"Up to about February 2023 the rover was moving about 7 or 8 metres every drive and typically about 40 m per lunar day. Suddenly the drives dropped to about 3 or 4 m each and only about 8 or 10 m per lunar day," Stooke said in an email.

"That lasted until about October 2023, and then drives dropped to only 1 or 2 m each. In March 2024 Yutu 2 was resting just southwest of a 10 m diameter crater, and it's been there ever since, as revealed by LRO images," Stooke added.

posted 01-15-2025 06:54 PM               

Drive maps showing the resting place of Yutu-2 and the full route map, from Phil Stooke. Yutu-2 landed in Von Kármán crater on the far side of the Moon in Jan. 2019 and was mobile for more than five years.