Poor China, always at the butt of jokes for its space program. Even when the country tries to defy its astronomic reputation, it fails. Look no further than the Moon rover China deployed in December. The Jade Rabbit was never intended to stay on the Moon for long. It was, however, expected to last longer than a month and a half.
In an unfortunate coincidence, the announcement of Jade Rabbit's failure came on the ten-year anniversary of the United States' deployment of the Opportunity rover on Mars. The Opportunity is still going strong a decade later, despite it only being intended to operate for three months. China's Jade Rabbit was also supposed to last for the amount of time.
China still has some work to do if it wants to hang with America. So does Russia, in fact. The United States has been the only country able to keep three rovers active on the Moon or Mars for more than a year. Even with NASA dwindling, the United States is dominating space. So that's nice.
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[via Wall Street Journal]
