According to an update from the China National Space Administration, China has a lunar spacecraft located on both the near and far sides of the moon.
Back in December 2013, the Chang'e 3 moon mission, which comprises a lunar lander and a small rover, landed in Mare Imbrium, making China the third country to soft-land on the moon.
And the mission lander is still operational, more than 2,400 days after launch, the Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center announced in early September, while the rover bit the lunar dust after 31 months on the moon.
It is understood that one scientific payload, the Lunar Ultraviolet Telescope, is still operational. Variable stars were tracked by the automated instrument, and an image of the Pinwheel Galaxy (M101) was also returned from the moon.
Via regularly picking up signals from the lander, radio amateurs have reported Chang'e 3 activity. During the lunar day (which lasts approximately 14 Earth days), the solar-powered spacecraft operates and communicates through the X and S band with ground stations in China, at Kashi in the northwest and at Jiamusi in the northeast. The lander is kept heated by a radioisotope heater unit during the extreme cold of lunar nights.
In January 2014, after moving a total of 377 feet around the lunar surface, the lunar rover, called Yutu (which translates to "Jade Rabbit"), lost the ability to rove at the end of the second lunar day of the mission. China's state news outlet Xinhua claimed at the time that Yutu had developed a "mechanical control abnormality" triggered by the complicated atmosphere of the lunar surface.
The mission of Yutu was planned to last only three months, but it continued to work until mid-2016 while stationary. Yutu set a new record during its journey for working on the lunar surface longer than any other moon rover.
Long after its demise, Yutu continues to make contributions, with new research findings already coming from data obtained by the rover. At the Chang'e 3 landing site, researchers from the China University of Geosciences and other institutes recently found evidence of three comparatively new layers of basalt, or volcanic rock, and reported their results in the Geophysical Research Letters journal on Aug. 17.
The area created from a single, dense lava flow was indicated by previous studies. The observations are based on data from the ground-penetrating radar of Yutu, which gathers electromagnetic pulse reflected signals to provide insights into the lunar subsurface.
Meanwhile, China's Chang'e 4 mission, a successor to Chang'e 3, is well into its 22nd lunar day, which started on Sept. 10, on the far side of the moon.
The Chang'e 4 mission, like Chang'e 3, includes a lander and a rover called Yutu 2, and made the first-ever soft landing in January 2019 on the lunar far side.
