Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Moon Space Technology

China's Jade Rabbit Fights To Come Back From the Dead 76

Despite being declared officially lost, the Chinese moon rover may yet have some life left. Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "CNN reports that reports of Jade Rabbit's demise may have been premature as signs are emerging that China's first lunar rover may be up and running again. Following technical malfunctions Xinhua says that the lunar rover had lost communication with mission control but on Thursday the state news agency said that the rover was "fully awake" and had returned to its normal signal-receiving status. "Jade Rabbit has fully resurrected and is able to receive signals, but still suffers a mechanical control abnormality," says China's lunar program spokesman Pei Zhaoyu. "The rover entered hibernation while in an abnormal state. We were worried it wouldn't be able to make it through the extreme cold of the lunar night. But it came back alive. The rover stands a chance of being saved as it is still alive." The lunar rover's end seemed near when it signed off at the end of January with a poignant message: "Goodnight humanity." Yutu, as the device is known in Mandarin, had been out of action for two weeks following a technical malfunction, and media around the world filed its obituary late on Wednesday after a short statement on Chinese state media alerted the world to its apparent terminal failings. Should Jade Rabbit make a full recovery, it would cap another success for space exploration, which has seen NASA's Opportunity Mars rover, currently exploring the red planet, far outlast its expected lifespan."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

China's Jade Rabbit Fights To Come Back From the Dead

Comments Filter:
  • by david.emery ( 127135 ) on Thursday February 13, 2014 @08:56AM (#46237409)

    and was recovering from all the partying and travel back to the Moon.

    (Seriously, great news!)

    • by jones_supa ( 887896 ) on Thursday February 13, 2014 @09:23AM (#46237603)

      Seriously, great news!

      My congratulations too. Great to hear that they can continue the project.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Or just that the sun is heating it up enough to revive from the cold. Not sure how many cold/warm cycles it would be able to survive in the crippled state.
      Hope they learn something from it.

      Not like everyone else that commented badly here have their first rev hardware/software of any level of real complexities works perfectly in real life. May the person with no sins cast the first stone.

    • Jade Rabbit doesn't have time to talk to it's "helicopter" parents? Typical youth.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    I for one , welcome, Our Lunar Robotic Zombie Overlord!

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Hrumph. Kids today. This subject calls for a Monty Python "I feel better...I think I'll go for a walk..." joke. The overlord style joke was more appropriate when it landed.

  • by Anonymous Coward
    In reality, China already has a 3D printer on the Moon and they simply printed out another Jade Rabbit.
    • More likely a party official gifted the lunar lander to his 10yo son for his birthday and has now been disciplined.

      Less than a day after the original story was submitted to slashdot, the craft is returned to the fake landing site in the desert.

  • Then we could go on about whipping a Dead Horse.

  • by wonkey_monkey ( 2592601 ) on Thursday February 13, 2014 @09:28AM (#46237635) Homepage

    it signed off at the end of January with a poignant message: "Goodnight humanity."

    No it didn't. Some guy in a press office wrote it.

    Can we please stop anthropomorphising rovers? They hate that.

  • Who thinks that "Jade Rabbit" sounds like it should be the name of a sex toy?

  • Clearly it was the work of Chinese moon poachers. Jade rabbits can be make into slippers that give you vitality and speed so they go for $1 mil on the black market. There were definitely poachers on the moon waiting for it.
  • by wiredlogic ( 135348 ) on Thursday February 13, 2014 @10:26AM (#46238161)

    This sounds more like a phony story ordered by Party elites to cover up the embarrassment of failure. They can just pretend it started working again (with the camera mysteriously failing) and save face with bogus tweets and press releases.

    • Sadly, this is the first thing I thought, too. I hope that it is working again, though.

      • Sadly, this is the first thing I thought, too. I hope that it is working again, though.

        It's not out of the question that it could wake up. If they still have power and the boards are reasonably intact a timed reboot should be achievable. Having functional devices--sensors, actuators, communications, or whatever they have, would be more of a challenge. Or yeah, a fake story is always a possibility.. I'm sure they would have some of their best engineers on the team, so I wouldn't count them out yet, or so I would like to believe.

    • Or... it could just be that the electronics and battery finally warmed up enough to start working. It does get to around -175C during the Lunar night and the failure was the inability to close the "cover" over the electronics bay, protecting it.
    • If you made a phony story would you publish a tweet showing a picture of the RF being received including the exact frequencies it's happening on so any ham could independently verify the findings?

      It may be bogus, but common this isn't North Korea we're talking about. The Chinese government is a bit smarter than that.

  • by DieByWire ( 744043 ) on Thursday February 13, 2014 @10:29AM (#46238181)
    Mostly dead is a little bit alive. A little bit alive they can work with.
    • by ignavus ( 213578 )

      Mostly dead is a little bit alive. A little bit alive they can work with.

      But does it have a wheelbarrow? That would be something.

  • by John3 ( 85454 ) <john3 AT cornells DOT com> on Thursday February 13, 2014 @10:30AM (#46238195) Homepage Journal
    Mission Control: "Brave, brave Jade Rabbit! You shall not have died in vain!"
    Jade Rabbit: "Uh, I'm-I'm not quite dead, sir."
    Mission Control: "Well, you shall not have been mortally wounded in vain!"
    Jade Rabbit: "Uh, I-I think uh, I could pull through, sir."
    Mission Control: "Oh, I see."
  • by dkf ( 304284 ) <donal.k.fellows@manchester.ac.uk> on Thursday February 13, 2014 @10:39AM (#46238273) Homepage

    Just needed a fsck and it was then in /lost+found

    • Just needed a fsck and it was then in /lost+found

      That would be great except this is Windows 98 and somebody sent the format C:/ command....Anybody have a boot disk and a long arm?

  • "Zombie Rabbit On The Moon!" :p

  • I am tired of reading about how the Mars rovers miraculously lived so long.

    It should be obvious to even the dumbest among us that the short "expected lifespan" of the rovers was just some contractual trigger for some bonus for some contractor and was in no way a design goal.

    • by geekoid ( 135745 )

      Incorrect. It must just pain you when things go well simply do to good design.

      Even if you were correct, you are not, it would Still Be a Design Goal to get there.

    • I am tired of reading about how the Mars rovers miraculously lived so long.

      It should be obvious to even the dumbest among us that the short "expected lifespan" of the rovers was just some contractual trigger for some bonus for some contractor and was in no way a design goal.

      You are right, it was a design criteria, a requirement etc. 90 days was the warranty period, the contracted minimum lifespan required for the rovers and the absolute minimum design criteria for the entire system. It simply MUST work 100% for 90 days. I'm sure the "goal" was much longer. I'm just guessing, but had either of the rovers failed within the 90 days a sizable final payment would not have been made.

      But, I'm not so tired of hearing that the rovers both have lasted more than the warranty. It is a

  • Should Jade Rabbit make a full recovery, it would cap another success for space exploration, which has seen NASA's Opportunity Mars rover, currently exploring the red planet, far outlast its expected lifespan."

    Opportunity far outlived its projected 90 day operational lifetime. Jade Rabbit was supposed to go 3 months and has already gone belly-up just a month into it.

  • Is it in the heliopause, or past it? Is the cat alive or dead?
  • We all asked for it. We bitched and moaned. We wanted Slashdot to deliver stories faster, and we mocked it when it published yesterdays news.

    The one time Slashdot listens to its users and it published a story so fast that it was wrong, and was debunked only hours later.

    Good to see the little wabbit is still fighting on.

  • It was probably on the dark side of the moon looking for Transformers...

Real Users find the one combination of bizarre input values that shuts down the system for days.

Working...