yutu news 玉兔

2014

As of 6 Sep CCTV news, the chinese lunar lander and rover is still operational, although the rover Yutu was damaged and cannot move

from Twitter UHF@SatCom on 8 Sep:

Tonites Yutu Rover X-Band downlink - carrier only, no data, but still a great signal. FFT @ http://pjm.uhf-satcom.com/twtr/yutu_080914.jpg … - nothing from Chang'e'3

美國太空總署（NASA）微博證實，玉兔已超期服役7個月 is just a nice misunderstanding ( 美麗的誤會 )

some of instruments onboard yutu is still working and sending back data to Earth, 10 months after landing, which was initially expected to have a lifetime of 3 months. It works 7 more months.

据新华网9月4日电（记者刘畅）中国探月工程总设计师吴伟仁4日在澳门表示，6日“玉兔号”月球车将进入第十个月昼工作期，目前其4台科学载荷——全景相机、测月雷达、红外成像光谱仪、粒子激发X射线谱仪运行正常。

but some doubt how much scientific exploration can be done, if Yutu stays stationery

from planetary.org

from ifeng

on youtube

the video didn't mention when the 360 panorama image was made, but by comparing the 2 photos above, it seems to be on final position, which it reached on 17 Jan 2014.

What's causing the damage to Yutu Rover? it still not yet known  ( or disclosed )

中国探月工程总设计师吴伟仁: “月球车出现故障，说明我们对月球环境仍然缺乏了解，比如对月尘的认识非常不足。”吴伟仁说，月尘比我们地球上沙漠里的沙子要细小得多，精密的月球车只要有一点点月尘进入，就有可能造成短路，从而让其移动系统发生故障。

but on planetary society, they suspect that It stopped as it was getting close to the lander, apparently because the electronics associated with moving its wheels and solar panels, so probably an important central control unit, failed at that point. I don’t know when it stopped, but the map shown at LPSC is instructive. It shows the daily stops between drives (the rover was only operated when in direct contact with China, for at most half a day at a time), and counting them suggests the fault occurred in the middle part of the day, possibly due to excessive heating which might have been exacerbated by dust buildup on the rover body. But this is conjecture, as I don’t know that each stop occupied only one day.

文匯報
http://news.wenweipo.com/2016/02/03/IN1602030011.htm