BEIJING - China has restored communications having its space program's troubled "Jade Rabbit" moon rover, but engineers continue to be trying to fix its mechanical dilemmas, state media reported Thursday.
The state Xinhua News Agency cited Pei Zhaoyu, the lunar probe program's spokesman, as saying the rover had survived the frigid cold of the lunar night that started Jan. 25.
Image taken by the on-board camera of the lunar probe Chang'e-3 and made off the screen of the Beijing Aerospace
Get a grip on Center in Beijing. (AP Photo/Xinhua)
The "Jade Rabbit" rover was made to roam the lunar surface for 90 days while surveying for natural resources and sending right back data. Nonetheless it ran in to dilemmas since it was shutting down in preparation for the lunar night, which lasts fourteen days.
The issues were a rare setback for China's burgeoning space program, which lately has conducted space walks and placed an area station in orbit.
Pei said the rover had "come back again to life" despite space experts' earlier in the day concerns that it could maybe not survive the excessively low temperatures of the lunar night, once the temperature drops to minus 180 degrees Celsius (minus 292 Fahrenheit).
"The rover stands the opportunity to be saved given that it really is still alive, " Pei was quoted as saying. That he said it had been still unclear what caused the issue.
The mission is a popular success for China's military-backed space program. Updates on the moon rover's progress have already been posted on an unofficial Chinese microblog account written with the Jade Rabbit's voice, attracting thousands of comments by Chinese Internet surfers.
