UPDATE2:
Return of the Jade Rabbit: China’s moon rover back in action
BEIJING — China’s Jade Rabbit lunar rover, feared to have suffered some irreparable technical difficulties, may yet have some spring in its step.
UPDATE: It may have a heartbeat. A website devoted to the amateur monitoring of radio signals from deep space, uhf-satcom.com, reports that a downlink signal from the Yutu rover has been detected. Whether it’s a zombie or not is still unknown.
From wire reports:
China’s lunar rover, Yutu, was has failed to reawaken after 14 days of hibernation.
Yutu, China’s first lunar rover, is dead.
Mission controllers in Beijing were unable to communicate with and restore the rover, also called Jade Rabbit, according to a Chinadaily report released February 12. A problem with the rover was first announced on January 25.
China’s first lunar rover, Yutu, could not be restored to full function on Monday as expected, and netizens mourned it on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like service. [Special coverage]
Yutu experienced mechanical problems on Jan 25 and has been unable to function since then.
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One wonders if the cause will ultimately be traced to something many people experience daily on a worldwide basis: poorly manufactured Chinese components often fail quickly.
Of course, there are many instances of other countries moon and mars landers/rovers failing on deployment, so they are not alone. It is still an accomplishment to just get there.
Andyj says:
February 12, 2014 at 1:44 pm
The first & still best touch smartphones in the world, iPhones, are assembled in China (or Taiwan).
Wether it works the first time or not, at least the Chinese are doing basic space exploration work.
I wish them every success.
We North Americans have not only dropped the ball, we have punted it into the la la land of “Moslem Outreach”.
Maybe, assuming our civic structures survive, we can partner up with the Asian Explorers, when we have adults in government again.
The achievement of getting to the moon and successfully soft landing a rover is no loss of face for the Chinese.
Jade Rabbit may be dead, but the Chinese quest for He3 from the lunar regolith is not. Some may foolishly gloat that the rover failed prematurely, but the message from the Chinese should be clear – “Good luck with those wind farms, losers”.
LOL, when I worked for PSINet (when it still existed) we bought a few Hong Kong based ISPs. We were heading to Hong Kong after one such purchase when one of our employees (who was an emigre from Hong Kong) off offhandedly remarked, “You do know that Chinese companies always maintain two sets of books, one for the government and the real one, right?
Their devotion to ‘quality’ is not very high (and still isn’t as far as I can see). Just make it last long enough to cash the customers check…
Send up Robbie the Robot to give it a good nudge.
It ain’t like we haven’t had some tough lessons – Apollo 1, Challenger & Columbia
‘One wonders if the cause will ultimately be traced to something many people experience daily on a worldwide basis: poorly manufactured Chinese components often fail quickly”.
Conjecture and generalisation with a not so subtle undertone Anthony. Your site is terrific and I visit everyday but that sort of comment does WUWT no good at all. Give us some data to support your implication and I’ll be happy.
REPLY: well for one, I’m an importer of Chinese electronics on a regular basis, not by choice, but only since I can’t buy the devices anywhere else. In some batches, I’ve seen failure rates of 25% out of the box. Just last week for example I had a batch of 25 LED 60watt bulbs that I planned to deploy in my office and at home. The very first one I screwed in started smoking and caught fire as the driver electronics failed and filled my home with nasty chemical laden smoke. I haven’t the courage to test any more. At the office, I have a scrap pile of Chinese power supplies and other components that experienced infant mortality, which aren’t worth shipping back. – Anthony
After buying my bmw and it breaking so often, I believe Germans are not that good either at building stuff that lasts. Unless that is their plan to get me to spend more at the dealers.
I feel bad for the engineers. [Off] to the re-education camps for them.
One wonders if the cause will ultimately be traced to something many people experience daily on a worldwide basis: poorly manufactured Chinese components often fail quickly.
It’s a complex endeavor, and THEY have landed up there, and roved around for a while, which we haven’t been able to do squat in over 40 years. Somehow they took their cheap Chinese components and made it fly. Next thing you know they are going to have colonies up there, be planting the flag and claiming the land. WE, nada. We will still be talking about going to far off pointless Mars or Uranus, but the land is in our backyard and we can’t even do that. Well, I’m off to the dollar store to buy a Lunar Rover Kit. “Die Young, Stay Pretty.” -Blondie
It’s awfully easy to make fun of Chinese made components, but I wish it wasn’t.
I think this is more of a cultural problem than anything else, and I don’t mean the Chinese culture. From my experience the same problems were experienced with Soviet made stuff. Check out ebay, you can still find some Soviet-era components.
When you live in a society that doesn’t really reward exceptional work, most people simply won’t do exceptional work. Keep the machine running. Capacitor… capacitor…capacitor… clunk clunk clunk. What’s that? The last 50 weren’t even capacitors? Who cares? By the time anyone notices I’ll be home having beer.
I’ve bought LOTS of components from China over the last few years, and I never buy one of something. Always two or three, because you can almost be certain that one or two will either be DOA or will fail in the first few minutes. But…. they’re cheap enough that it still remains cost effective.
REPLY: Exactly, I always overbuy as well, because I figure 10% will be DOA. – Anthony
stevek – that is the plan for ALL automakers… they’re constantly trying to engineer vehicles that you have to go to dealers for service, and apparently are completely unaware that their dealer networks are horrid.
My God Jim, I’m a doctor, not a rocket scientist…..
I avoid most indigenous Chinese products like the plague but I do buy made in China products produced by international companies. The laptop I am using now is made in China.
I suspect that by 2070 NASA will become a tiny ‘climate forecaster’ run by swivel eyed climate activists and China and India will have men living on Mars. 😉
BTW for those concerned that I’m dissing the Chinese unfairly, I’ll point out that they block the entire wordpress.com domain in the great firewall of China, as reported by many WUWT readers to me and in Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_China since free speech is a threat to their government. So, they can’t even read this article.
I’ll worry about any apologies that might be needed when they end that blockade.
Maybe it defected and is currently being debriefed…
Hey Lim, I told you you were holding that blueprint you got with BitTorrent upside down
stevek says:
February 12, 2014 at 2:13 pm
After buying my bmw and it breaking so often, I believe Germans are not that good either at building stuff that lasts. Unless that is their plan to get me to spend more at the dealers.
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That BMW could have been made in China. BMW have an auto plant in Shenyang, China
BTW for those concerned that I’m dissing the Chinese unfairly, I’ll point out that they block the entire wordpress.com domain in the great firewall of China, as reported by many WUWT readers to me and in Wikipedia
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Very true
The very telling comment is that NON-TECHNICAL (easy, cheap, simple-to-make) things are also cheaper “Made in China”.
Really, why would a $1.50 toothbrush, a box of 300 toothpicks, a bag of 75 wood BBQ skewers, a set of six 1 inch paintbrushes, a bag of children’s pencils, a box of 30 ballpoint pens …. or even a set of box-end wrenches or screwdrivers be cheaper to make in China (by slave labor obviously for a Chinese Army general’s company, get boxed into a truck, get shipped 400 km to a wharf, get loaded on a containership, get shipped 5000 miles, get unloaded to a US train, get sent 1200 miles by train to a truck stop, get loaded on another truck at that building, get shipped 200 miles to another warehouse, get re-boxed into a store’s allotment, get shipped 200 miles to a store’s loading dock, THEN get put on a shelf full of 300 competing low-quality “Made in China” other pencils and pens and leads and rulers and erasers ….. And still make a profit at 75 cents for the bag of wood skewers?
Just don’t forget that the first SIX NASA lunar probes of the Ranger series all failed completely. Some missed the moon altogether. There was also a series of early lunar probes called Pioneer. Maybe ten of them. They all failed too, and are almost forgotten now.
As a Brit who knows some history, all I can say is: Enjoy these cheap jibes at the expense of the Chinese while you still can.
You won’t be able to do it for very long.
As for thinking that they have to steal plans to make any progress, how did the US get hold of the designs to make cotton spinning machines just after the War of Independence, how did you invent the jet engine and was Werner von Braun any help with the rocket program?
Typical “Made in China” crap. Did they buy it at Walmart?
Maybe they shouldn’t have used Chinese parts…
timothy sorenson says:
February 12, 2014 at 1:35 pm
I think praising them for what they have accomplished and encouraging them further is the only correct response.
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Absolutely.