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.
When you bring up the subject of chinese product quality, you all need to talk to some product liability lawyers, or automotive supply chain supplier QC folks.
The one consistent story I am getting via the quality control world is is how every single Chinese manufacturer goes shoddy the longer you use them.
_EVERY_SINGLE_ONE_
You have to watch them like hawks and be prepared to walk away at the first sign of shoddy.
The usual foreign company response is to sent QC experts with the power to cut off Chinese companies for poor quality.
See:
How to Ensure the Effectiveness of QC Inspections in China
by Renaud Anjoran on 6 February 2014
http://www.qualityinspection.org/
and
How to deal with production problems in China
by Renaud Anjoran on 31 July 2010
http://www.qualityinspection.org/production-problems-in-china/
This interview of Paul Midler, author of the book “Poorly Made in China: An Insider’s Account of the Tactics Behind China’s Production Game” is pretty typical of the Quality assurance main stream regards dealing with Chinese suppliers:
Explaining China’s Quality Control Problems: A new book goes behind the scenes of manufacturers and importers.
By Kimberly Palmer Apr. 23, 2009
http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/alpha-consumer/2009/04/23/explaining-chinas-quality-control-problems
This key question and answer from the interview encapsulates what I
have seen and heard professionally:
>Some say that China is going through what Japan went through in the 1950s.
>Or quality problems in China today are sometimes compared with quality
>problems Americans suffered in the 19th century. What do you say to these
>sorts of claims?
I’m not so sure about the analogy with Japan in the 1950s. In China,
you have specifications reductions that result in what I call “quality
fade,” but then you also have some rather willful game playing where
quality is manipulated in such a way so as to fool laboratory
equipment and inspection. The melamine scandal in China’s dairy
industry is a case in point, though it affected the Chinese more than
it affected the rest of the world. You have large number of industry
insiders who were adding a chemical ingredient in order to circumvent
testing controls. You have in China quite literally thousands of
foreign inspectors running around China in a bid to preempt disaster.
This phenomenon did not exist in Japan at any point in its
development.
Every Chinese manufacturer has a “Communist Party Prince” silent
partner that wants more and will cheapen the product in some way to
get his. That is the nature of China and nothing will prevent the
parasites from taking their share.
The problem most foreign companies have with really powerful
“Prince” silent partners is that you cannot assume that the goods
inspected in China by outside inspector are the ones exported.
Absent counterfeit-proof serial numbers, a corrupt government (one
whose officials are corrupt and can’t be purged) can overcome any QA
process in their jurisdiction.
Part of the reason I am harping on this subject is that the ultimate
product of any industrial process within an authoritarian/totalitarian
political system is toxic waste.
You cannot root out corruption in authoritarian/totalitarian
political systems because it always devolves down the lowest level due
to the lack of checks and balances of a representative government that
allows real judicial risk/liability assignment outside of politics.
The Stalinist terror that was required to keep corruption centralized
in the USSR cannot be sustained over the long term.
China is on the same “political corruption failure trajectory” as
the Soviet Union. They are just taking longer thanks to outside
infusions of capitalism and quality control.
The pollution of China’s land air and water is the quite literally
flaming datum of that trajectory.
Could this have been because of the Japanese embraced and appreciated, in large part, the work of Dr. Deming?
Deming Influence on Post-war Japanese Quality Development
About Dr. W. Edwards Deming
.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-china-blog-26167671
From Wikipedia Feb. 24.
Command Control was expecting the rover to contact Earth on 12 February 2014 had it endured its second lunar night. Since it did not transmit any signals, the rover was officially declared permanently inoperative.[40] However, one day later, on 13 February, the rover reestablished communication with Command Control.[41][42][43] China’s lunar program spokesman Pei Zhaoyu declared that although Yutu is able to communicate, “it still suffers a mechanical control abnormality.”[44]
Phys.org Feb. 24
The rover entered its 3rd lunar night time hibernation period on February 22. It was still unable to move and serious technical troubles persist that are hampering science operations.[45] Chinese space officials have not divulged the exact nature of the problems, but stated that the ground penetrating radar, panoramic and infrared imaging equipment are functioning normally.[45][46]
The rover, nicknamed ‘Jade Rabbit’ remained stationary during the just concluded two week long lunar day time period, said SASTIND. It was unable to move due to the mechanical glitches.
“Yutu only carried out fixed point observations during its third lunar day.”
But it did complete some limited scientific observations. And fortunately the ground penetrating radar, panoramic and infrared imaging equipment are functioning normally.