Yutu-2 travels almost 300 meters on ninth lunar day
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According to a story today in official Chinese state-run media, Yutu-2 traveled another 284.99 meters during its ninth lunar day on the surface of the Moon, and has now been placed in hibernation in order to survive the long lunar night.
The story provides no further information, including saying nothing about the strange and unusual material the rover supposedly spotted during this time period.
My annual birthday-month fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now on-going. Not only do your donations help pay my bills, they give me the freedom to speak honestly about science and culture, instead of being forced to write it as others demand.
Please consider donating by giving either a one-time contribution or a regular subscription, as outlined in the tip jar below.
Regular readers can support Behind The Black with a contribution via paypal:
If Paypal doesn't work for you, you can support Behind The Black directly by sending your donation by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman, to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
According to a story today in official Chinese state-run media, Yutu-2 traveled another 284.99 meters during its ninth lunar day on the surface of the Moon, and has now been placed in hibernation in order to survive the long lunar night.
The story provides no further information, including saying nothing about the strange and unusual material the rover supposedly spotted during this time period.
That comes to three meters an hour. I wonder why it is so slow.
For the same reason Curiosity is, I suppose – limited or no ability to conduct autonomous driving combined with considerable caution on the part of its handlers. Zipping around could tip it over or put it into some small ground declivity not easily spotted if moving faster. The latter sort of mishap could trap it.
It could be the gearing is involved. For a given motor (and the size is limited by everything else the rover needs, you want more instruments, maybe motor and battery size need to go down), the lower the gearing, the greater the torque, but the lower the speed. You’re not trying to set speed records here and the more torque you have, the steeper the slope you can ascend and, perhaps, the easier to get you out of awkward situations.
Hmm. Because our robotic rovers do not travel so fast, maybe we would get more exploration for our buck if we had humans doing the exploration. They move much faster, make their own decisions on the spot, but they cost a bit more to get there and back again.