[quote]Saturday night, China's space agency got some very bad news, and it's only getting worse. The country's first lunar rover, the Jade Rabbit, ran into a "mechanical control abnormality" over the weekend, and a growing chorus of experts indicate this may be the end of the line for the robot. Observers say the equipment failure may have disabled the electrical motors needed to close the rover's solar panels, which would have disastrous effects as the rover heads into the two-week "lunar night."[/quote]
Despite the little flame of USA nationalistic pride I got from reading that, it really is bad news for science, since we were hoping to get some good info from that machine over the next few months :(
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Only a fool would believe this. That rover didn't have a mechanical failure. It ran into something that scared the Chinese enough that losing face was preferable to the truth. We have only so much time until that ugly truth bites us in the ass. Are you ready?