The China National Space Administration (CNSA) on Saturday released new photos from the country's lunar rover Yutu-2.
The photos showed the wheel track left by the rover, some rocks and a small impact crater on the lunar surface.
A panoramic picture of the wheel track left by Yutu-2 when it traveled to the LE05103 point on moon surface on January 18, 2023. /CNSA
The panoramic camera installed aboard the rover took photos of the moon surface which show the wheel track left by the rover (L), a rock four meters away from the rover and an impact crater about five meters in diameter (R), January 18, 2023. /CNSA
The photos were captured after the rover and Chang'e-4 lander woke up from their dormant mode on January 15 and January 16, respectively, ushering in their 51st lunar day of work.
The Yutu-2 rover is solely powered by its solar panels and thus only wakes up when the sun rises to about 15 degrees and needs to rest if the sun rises beyond 30 degrees as the temperature then would be too high for the rover to operate, according to Li Chunlai, the deputy chief designer of phase three of China's lunar exploration program.
A lunar day and a lunar night together is about 28 days on Earth, during which the rover spends about two thirds of the time in dormant mode, Li added.
In its 50 previous lunar days of work, Yutu-2 traveled nearly 1,455.2 meters in total, while the lander traveled 865.1 meters.
Originally designed to operate for three months, Yutu-2 has worked for more than four years and released more than 940.1 gigabytes (GB) of scientific data to date.