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China's mission at the other end of the moon is dormant since its fifth lunar and icy night.
The surface of the moon experiences the day and the night, just like that of the Earth. There is no coherent "dark side", as popular culture sometimes says; Instead, the moon lives a whole day that lasts 28 Earth days. (However, there is indeed a distant side that Chang & e-4 explores and still faces the Earth.)
Chang & e-4 reached the moon almost at the beginning of the year, January 2nd. The fifth month of the calendar year, May, is therefore the fifth lunar day of mission activity. And with his fifth lunar night, the spaceship must be stopped. "The Chang-e-4 probe goes into standby mode at night due to lack of solar energy," according to the official Chinese news agency Xinhua.
Related: Chang-e-4 in pictures: China's mission on the far side of the moon
This historic mission is the first to successfully land a soft landing on the dark side of the moon. Chang & # 39; E-4 is exploring The crater Von Kármán, a lunar element 186 km wide, could reveal clues to the interior and the history of the Moon. The crater is located on the lunar basin of the South-Aitken Pole, a region whose formation could have been affected by the changing composition and heat of the lunar slope.
The Yutu-2 rover seen by the LG Chang-e-4.
(Image: © CNSA)
The lunar probe Chang & # 39; e-4 and its Yutu-2 rover have been on standby since Saturday, May 11, according to Xinhua. The mission is led by the Lunar Exploration Program of China.
The Yutu-2 mission was designed to last three lunar daysbut the mission is stretching longer than expected, like some of Mars' NASA mobile missions, for example.
The Chinese lunar lander Chang & # 39; e-4 located on the other side of the moon took this panoramic view of the crater Von Kármán, showing the spacecraft rover, Yutu-2, nearby. The National Space Administration of China unveiled the image on January 10, 2019.
(Image: © CNSA)
The Chinese robots will withstand two weeks of cold lunar night before waking up for another day of investigations.
The Yutu-2 rover has traveled about 626 feet (191 meters) from the other side of the moon until now, according to Xinhua. The mission also provides information on this enigmatic region, via the Visible Near-Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (VNIS) instruments, the Chang-e-4 panoramic camera (PCam), and lunar penetration radar (LPR).
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