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Sad news. The rabbit is dead.
No, this isn't the result of a very old fashioned pregnancy test -- I'm talking about China's Jade Rabbit lunar rover.
In a burst of euphemism, Chinese officials have announced that the Jade Rabbit "could not be restored to full function" but the reality seems to be that it is now defunct, dead, kaput. It is a non-rover (to use Monty Python-inspired prose).
What a shame -- for this little rover was China's chance to demonstrate that it really has a grip on developing rugged, reliable and durable technology.
To be fair though... the lunar surface is far from a pleasant place to play with your hi-tech toys.
The total lack of atmosphere means that there's nothing to buffer stuff from the intense heat of the lunar daytime and the equally extreme cold of the lunar night.
A hard vacuum also tends to make life hard, allowing no form of convective cooling and turning even the smallest leak in systems such as batteries into a fatal weakness whilst providing no respite from the wicked solar winds and other radiation.
Despite its relatively short lifespan, the Jade Rabbit was still a remarkable project for a number of reasons.
Firstly, it was deployed by way of the first "soft landing" on the moon for almost four decades.
Secondly, it was always going to be a mission with a high risk of failure, simply due to the relative inexperience of China as a space-power.
That the craft made it as far as it did and that it functioned for as long as it did is something to be proud of.
I'd really love to know just how much of the Jade Rabbit's technology was "consumer grade" stuff and I would not be too surprised if there was a fair bit of "off the shelf" stuff inside this bunny.
Will China's next step be to send men to the moon?
Certainly for them to do so now would be no more risky than those Apollo missions that eventually resulted in a manned landing and to pull off such a coup would be a real feather in their cap.
As a bystander, I'd love to see China put someone on the moon -- if only because it would likely see a new space-race created and as someone who vividly remembers the last one, I know just how much of a driver this is for scientific and technical advancement.
There's no way that China can expand its empire here on earth without risking armed conflict with other nations -- but space... well that's there for the taking!
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