Chinese robots set the longest operating record on the Moon

The robot Rabbit Jade 2 has surpassed the Soviet Lunokhod 1 with a time of operation on the Moon's surface for more than 11 months.

Robot Rabbit Ngoc 2 and the Hang Nga 4 lander landed in the 186km wide Von Kármán basin on January 3, 2019, making China the first country to have a successful ship landing in the dark side of the Moon. The robot will continue to operate in the near future, Space reported on December 18.

Robot Rabbit Jade 2, the new "record family" on the Moon.(Photo: Space).

To date, Ngoc Ngoc 2 has rolled for more than 11 months and walked about 345m. The distance sounds very short, ordinary people can walk in just a few minutes. However, with a solar-powered robot, crossing this distance is much more difficult.

The previous record for operating time on the lunar surface was the Soviet Lunokhod 1. This is the first remote-controlled vehicle-type robot to land on other celestial objects in space.

Lunokhod 1 operates in the Mare Imbrium Plain (meaning Rainy Sea) from November 17, 1970. It officially stopped operating after about 10.5 months, on October 4, 1971, to commemorate the 14th anniversary of the launch of the first artificial satellite Sputnik 1. Lunokhod 1 crossed the distance of 10.5 km on the surface Moon and send to Earth more than 20,000 ordinary photos and more than 200 panorama photos.

Earlier this month, the Jade Rabbit 2 and the Hang Nga 4 lander finished the work of the 12th Moon Day, turning to sleep mode, according to the Center for Space Exploration and Moon Discovery Program of the National Space Agency. China (CNSA). The moon takes about 29 days to complete an orbit, so one day the moon is nearly a month long on Earth.

Ngoc Ngoc 2's record is only for vehicles running on the lunar surface. Many spacecraft orbiting the Moon have a longer operating time. For example, NASA's LRO has been launched into space since June 2009 and is still working well.

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