Who is controlling Nasa's Mars rover? Indian-origin scientist from his flat in London

Nasa's Perseverance Mars rover made history earlier this year by successfully landing on the red planet. Nearly seven months after its takeoff, the Perseverance rover landed at Mars' Jezero Crater on February 19. Would you believe that Nasa's life-on-Mars mission valued at $3 billion is being controlled by an Indian-origin doctor from his one-bedroom apartment in London? Professor Sanjeev Gupta, a scientist with Nasa is controlling the Mars rover 'Perseverance' from his flat in south London. Professor Gupta was supposed to be at mission control in California but the Covid-19 pandemic restricted him to his flat above a hairdresser in Lewisham. "I should be at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, in a series of offices each one about three times bigger than this lounge, full of hundreds of scientists and engineers with their heads buried in laptops surrounded by large screens," Professor Sanjeev Gupta told the Daily Mail. 

Professor Sanjeev Gupta

When he found out that he would not be able to work out of mission control in California, Professor Sanjeev Gupta decided to rent a one-bedroom flat in Lewisham.

I did not want to disturb the sleep of my wife and children, he told the UK publication.

Professor Gupta has turned his rented apartment into a mini control centre with at least five computers and two other screens for video conferences with fellow scientists at Nasa.

One of Nasa's leading scientists working on the Perseverance Mars rover, Professor Gupta is a geology expert at London's Imperial College.

Accompanied by a team of nearly 400 scientists, Professor Sanjeev Gupta is directing the Perseverance rover to drill for samples on Mars. These samples will be transported back to Earth by 2027.

Chang'e 4 probe resumes work for 26th lunar day

The lander and rover of the Chang'e-4 probe have resumed work for the 26th lunar day on the far side of the moon. The lander woke up at 3:13 a.m. on Friday (Beijing time), and the rover Yutu-2, or Jade Rabbit-2, woke up at 10:29 a.m. on Thursday, according to the Lunar Exploration and Space Program Center of the China National Space Administration. Landing on the moon on Jan. 3, 2019, the Chang'e-4 probe has survived 736 Earth days on the moon. A lunar day is equal to about 14 days on Earth, and a lunar night is of the same length. The solar-powered probe switches to dormant mode during the lunar night. During the 26th lunar day, Yutu-2 will move northwest toward the basalt area or the impact craters with high reflectivity. Yutu-2 will take panoramic photos, and its infrared imaging spectrometer, neutral atom detector and lunar radar will continue to carry out scientific explorations. Research teams will analyze the detection data and release the scientific results.

Seven things to know about the NASA rover about to land on Mars

With only about 50 million miles (80 million kilometers) left to go in its 293-million-mile (471-million-kilometer) journey, NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover is nearing its new planetary home. The spacecraft has begun its approach to the Red Planet and in 43 days, on Feb. 18, 2021, Perseverance will blaze through Mars' atmosphere at about 12,100 mph (19,500 kph), touching down gently on the surface about seven minutes later. "We're working on our last adjustments to put Perseverance in perfect position to land in one of the most interesting places on Mars," said Fernando Abilleira, deputy mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. "The team can't wait to put these wheels in some Martian dirt." Built and managed by JPL for NASA, Perseverance will be joining another rover and lander currently at work on Mars, with several orbiters in the skies above. What sets this six-wheeled robot apart?

1. Perseverance is searching for signs of ancient life.


While the surface of Mars is a frozen desert today, scientists have learned from previous NASA missions that the Red Planet once hosted running water and warmer environments at the surface that could have supported microbial life.

"We want Perseverance to help us answer the next logical question: Are there actually signs of past microbial life on Mars?" said Katie Stack Morgan, deputy project scientist at JPL. "This demanding goal means sending the most sophisticated robotic scientist yet to Mars."

To tackle this question, which is key in the field of astrobiology, Perseverance carries a new suite of cutting-edge science instruments. Two of them will play a particularly important role in the search for potential signs of past life: SHERLOC (short for Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals), which can detect organic matter and minerals, and PIXL (short for Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry), which maps the chemical composition of rocks and sediments. The instruments will allow scientists to analyze these features together at a higher level of detail than any Mars rover has achieved before.

Perseverance will also use some instruments to gather science data from a distance: Mastcam-Z's cameras can zoom in on rock textures from as far away as a soccer field, while SuperCam will use a laser to zap rock and regolith (broken rock and dust) to study their composition in the resulting vapor. RIMFAX (short for Radar Imager for Mars' Subsurface Experiment) will use radar waves to probe geological features underground.

2. The rover is landing in a place with a high potential for finding these signs of past microbial life.


Terrain that is interesting to scientists can be challenging to land on. Thanks to new technologies that enable Perseverance to target its landing site more accurately and to autonomously avoid landing hazards, the spacecraft can safely touch down in a place as intriguing as Jezero Crater, a 28-mile-wide (45-kilometer-wide) basin that has steep cliffs, sand dunes, and boulder fields.

More than 3.5 billion years ago, a river there flowed into a body of water about the size of Lake Tahoe, depositing sediments in a fan shape known as a delta. The Perseverance science team believes this ancient river delta and lake deposits could have collected and preserved organic molecules and other potential signs of microbial life.

3. Perseverance is also collecting important data about Mars' geology and climate.

Context is everything. Mars orbiters have been collecting images and data from Jezero Crater from about 200 miles (322 kilometers) above, but finding signs of ancient life on the surface requires much closer inspection. It requires a rover like Perseverance.

Understanding Mars' past climate conditions and reading the geological history embedded in its rocks will give scientists a richer sense of what the planet was like in its distant past. Studying the Red Planet's geology and climate could also give us a sense of why Earth and Mars - despite some early similarities - ended up so different.

4. Perseverance is the first leg of a round trip to Mars.


The verification of ancient life on Mars carries an enormous burden of proof. Perseverance is the first rover to bring a sample caching system to Mars in order to package promising samples for return to Earth by a future mission.

Rather than pulverizing rock the way the drill on NASA's Curiosity rover does, Perseverance's drill will cut intact rock cores that are about the size of a piece of chalk and will place them in sample tubes that it will store until the rover reaches an appropriate drop-off location on Mars. The rover could also potentially deliver the samples to a lander that is part of the planned Mars sample return campaign by NASA and ESA (the European Space Agency).

Once the samples are here on Earth, we can examine them with instruments too large and complex to send to Mars, providing far more information about them than even the most sophisticated rover could.

5. Perseverance carries instruments and technology that will help pave the way for human missions to the Moon and Mars.


Among the future-looking technologies on this mission that will benefit human exploration is Terrain-Relative Navigation. As part of the spacecraft's landing system, Terrain-Relative Navigation will enable the descending spacecraft to quickly and autonomously comprehend its location over the Martian surface and modify its trajectory.

Perseverance will also have more autonomy on the surface than any other rover, including self-driving smarts that will allow it to cover more ground in a day's operations with fewer instructions from engineers on Earth. This fast-traverse capability will make exploration of the Moon, Mars, and other celestial bodies more efficient for other vehicles.

In addition, Perseverance carries a technology experiment called MOXIE (short for Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment) that will produce oxygen from Mars' carbon dioxide atmosphere. It will demonstrate a way that future explorers might produce oxygen for rocket propellant as well as for breathing.

Two other instruments will help engineers design systems for future human explorers to land and survive on Mars: The MEDLI2 (Mars Entry, Descent, and Landing Instrumentation 2) package is a next-generation version of what flew on the Mars Science Laboratory mission that delivered the Curiosity rover, while the MEDA (Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer) instrument suite provides information about weather, climate, and surface ultraviolet radiation and dust.

Perseverance is also giving a ride to the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter. A technology experiment separate from the rover's science mission, Ingenuity will attempt the first powered, controlled aircraft flight at another world. If the helicopter is successful in its 30-Martian-day (31-Earth-day) demonstration window, the data could help future explorations of the Red Planet - including those by astronauts - by adding a new aerial dimension.

6. The Perseverance rover embodies the NASA - and the scientific - spirit of overcoming challenges.

Getting the spacecraft to the launch pad during a pandemic, searching for signs of ancient life, collecting samples, and proving new technologies are no easy feats. Nor is a soft touchdown on Mars: Only about 50% of Martian landing attempts, by any space agency, have been successful.

The mission team draws inspiration from the name of its rover, with particular awareness of the challenges the entire world is experiencing at this time. With that in mind, the mission installed a special plate to honor the dedication and hard work of the medical community and first responders around the globe. The team hopes to inspire the entire world, and future explorers, to forge new paths and make discoveries on which the next generation can build.

7. You will get to ride along.

The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission carries more cameras than any interplanetary mission in history, with 19 cameras on the rover itself and four on other parts of the spacecraft involved in entry, descent, and landing. As with previous Mars missions, the Mars 2020 Perseverance mission plans to make raw and processed images available on the mission's website.

If all goes well, the public will be able to experience in high-definition what it's like to land on Mars - and hear the sounds of landing for the first time with an off-the-shelf microphone affixed to the side of the rover. Another microphone on SuperCam will help scientists understand the property of rocks the instrument is examining and can also listen to the wind.

If you are among the 10.9 million people who signed up to send your name to Mars, your name is stenciled on one of three silicon chips embedded on a plate on the rover that carries the words "Explore as one" in Morse code.

NASA's Perseverance rover bound for Mars to seek ancient life

NASA's latest Mars rover Perseverance launched Thursday on an astrobiology mission to look for signs of ancient microbial life on the Red Planet -- and to fly a helicopter-drone on another world for the first time. Previous trips to Mars have discovered it was far warmer and wetter three billion years ago than it is today, creating the conditions necessary for carbon-based life. Perseverance's goal is to go a step further, and discover whether "habitable" translated to "habited." "There would be no bigger discovery in the history of humanity than finding life that is not on our own world," NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine said. "If we were to make a discovery that it in fact was, everything from that point forward is going to be 'Okay, what other life is out there? How do we get to it? How do we study it?'" An Atlas V rocket carrying Perseverance's spaceship took off on schedule at 7:50 am (1150 GMT) from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and its stages separated according to plan. But as the spacecraft passed through the Earth's shadow, the temperature of a heating system dropped, triggering a "safe mode" that switched off all but essential systems. NASA said it hadn't encountered this problem before because previous spaceships followed a different flight path, but added the issue was not serious and the vessel would soon be back in normal mode. "The philosophy is that it is far better to trigger a safe mode event when not required, than miss one that is," the agency said. If all goes to plan, Perseverance will reach Mars on February 18, 2021, becoming the fifth rover to complete the voyage since 1997.

So far, all have been American. China launched its first Mars rover last week, which should arrive by May 2021.

By next year, the planet could have three active rovers, including NASA's Curiosity, which landed in 2012.

- Faster and smarter -

Perseverance is an improved version of Curiosity -- faster, smarter, and capable of autonomously navigating 200 meters (650 feet) per day.

About the size of a small SUV, it weighs a metric ton, has 19 cameras and two microphones -- which scientists hope will be the first to record sound on Mars.

It has a two-meter-long robotic arm, and is powered by a small nuclear battery.

Once on the surface, NASA will deploy the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter -- a small 1.8 kilogram (four pound) aircraft that will attempt to fly in an atmosphere that is only one percent the density of Earth's.

The idea is to lay down a proof of concept that could one day revolutionize planetary exploration, since rovers can only cover a few dozen kilometers in their whole lifespans and are vulnerable to sand dunes and other obstacles.

- A little MOXIE -

Another goal is to help pave the way for future human missions -- and a major obstacle is the planet's atmosphere of 96 percent carbon dioxide.

Liquid oxygen can be brought from Earth, or oxygen can be mined from ice underneath the Martian surface.

A simpler approach is converting it from the atmosphere, which is what the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, or MOXIE can do, using a process called electrolysis.

The plan is to perform at least 10 oxygen-producing runs using the car battery-sized device under as many different seasonal and environmental conditions as possible.

But Perseverance's primary mission is to scour the planet for evidence of ancient life forms.

The rover's drill will collect around 30 intact rock cores and place them in test tubes, to be collected by a future joint US-European mission.

Indisputable proof of past life on Mars will most likely not be confirmed, if it exists, until these samples are analyzed, which is unlikely to happen before the 2030s.

- Ancient delta -

NASA has chosen the Jezero crater as its landing site, a giant impact basin just north of the Martian equator.

Between three and four billion years ago, a river flowed there into a large body of water.

"At Jezero we have river valleys that flow into and out of the crater and we know that the lake filled up with water and that overflowed," geologist Katie Stack Morgan of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California said Thursday.

"We think that Jezero has all the building blocks to support past life."

The mission is set to last at least two years, but probably much longer given the endurance previous rovers have shown.

Summer road trip for Curiosity rover has begun

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has started a road trip that will continue through the summer across roughly a mile (1.6 kilometers) of terrain. By trip's end, the rover will be able to ascend to the next section of the 3-mile-tall Martian (5-kilometer-tall) mountain it's been exploring since 2014, searching for conditions that may have supported ancient microbial life. Located on the floor of Gale Crater, Mount Sharp is composed of sedimentary layers that built up over time. Each layer helps tell the story about how Mars changed from being more Earth-like - with lakes, streams and a thicker atmosphere - to the nearly-airless, freezing desert it is today. The rover's next stop is a part of the mountain called the "sulfate-bearing unit." Sulfates, like gypsum and Epsom salts, usually form around water as it evaporates, and they are yet another clue to how the climate and prospects for life changed nearly 3 billion years ago. But between the rover and those sulfates lies a vast patch of sand that Curiosity must drive around to avoid getting stuck. Hence the mile-long road trip: Rover planners, who are commanding Curiosity from home rather than their offices at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, expect to reach the area in early fall, although the science team could decide to stop along the way to drill a sample or study any surprises they come across. Depending on the landscape, Curiosity's top speeds range between 82 and 328 feet (25 and100 meters) per hour. Some of this summer road trip will be completed using the rover's automated driving abilities, which enable Curiosity to find the safest paths forward on its own. Rover planners allow for this when they lack terrain imagery. (Planners hope for more autonomy in the future; in fact, you can help train an algorithm that identifies Martian drive paths.)

"Curiosity can't drive entirely without humans in the loop," said Matt Gildner, lead rover driver at JPL. "But it does have the ability to make simple decisions along the way to avoid large rocks or risky terrain. It stops if it doesn't have enough information to complete a drive on its own."

In journeying to the "sulfate-bearing unit," Curiosity leaves behind Mount Sharp's "clay-bearing unit," which the robotic scientist had been investigating on the lower side of the mountain since early 2019. Scientists are interested in the watery environment that formed this clay and whether it could have supported ancient microbes.

Extending across both the clay unit and the sulfate unit is a separate feature: the "Greenheugh Pediment," a slope with a sandstone cap. It likely represents a major transition in the climate of Gale Crater. At some point, the lakes that filled the 96-mile-wide (154-kilometer-wide) crater disappeared, leaving behind sediments that eroded into the mountain we see today. The pediment formed later (though whether from wind or water erosion remains unknown); then windblown sand blanketed its surface, building into the sandstone cap.

The northern end of the pediment spans the clay region, and though the slope is steep, the rover's team decided to ascend Greenheugh back in March for a preview of terrain they'll see later in the mission. As Curiosity peeked over the top, scientists were surprised to find small bumps along the sandstone surface.

"Nodules like these require water in order to form," said Alexander Bryk, a doctoral student at University of California, Berkeley who led the pediment detour. "We found some in the windblown sandstone on top of the pediment and some just below the pediment. At some point after the pediment formed, water seems to have returned, altering the rock as it flowed through it."

These bumps may look familiar to Mars rover fans: One of Curiosity's predecessors, the Opportunity rover, found similar geologic textures dubbed "blueberries" back in 2004. Nodules have become a familiar sight throughout Mount Sharp, though these newly discovered ones are different in composition from what Opportunity found. They suggest water was present in Gale long after the lakes disappeared and the mountain took its present shape. The discovery extends the period when the crater hosted conditions capable of supporting life, if it ever was present.

"Curiosity was designed to go beyond Opportunity's search for the history of water," said Abigail Fraeman of JPL, who has served as deputy project scientist for both missions. "We're uncovering an ancient world that offered life a foothold for longer than we realized."

Mars 2020 Rover Completes Its First Drive

NASA's next Mars rover has passed its first driving test. A preliminary assessment of its activities on Dec. 17, 2019, found that the rover checked all the necessary boxes as it rolled forward and backward and pirouetted in a clean room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The next time the Mars 2020 rover drives, it will be rolling over Martian soil. "Mars 2020 has earned its driver's license," said Rich Rieber, the lead mobility systems engineer for Mars 2020. "The test unambiguously proved that the rover can operate under its own weight and demonstrated many of the autonomous-navigation functions for the first time. This is a major milestone for Mars 2020." Scheduled to launch in July or August 2020, the Mars 2020 mission will search for signs of past microbial life, characterize Mars' climate and geology, collect samples for future return to Earth, and pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet. It is scheduled to land in an area of Mars known as Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021. "To fulfill the mission's ambitious science goals, we need the Mars 2020 rover to cover a lot of ground," said Katie Stack Morgan, Mars 2020 deputy project scientist.

Mars 2020 is designed to make more driving decisions for itself than any previous rover. It is equipped with higher-resolution, wide-field-of-view color navigation cameras, an extra computer "brain" for processing images and making maps, and more sophisticated auto-navigation software. It also has wheels that have been redesigned for added durability.

All these upgrades allow the rover to average about 650 feet (200 meters) per Martian day. To put that into perspective, the longest drive in a single Martian day was 702 feet (214 meters), a record set by NASA's Opportunity rover. Mars 2020 is designed to average the current planetwide record drive distance.

In a 10-plus-hour marathon on Tuesday that demonstrated all the systems working in concert, the rover steered, turned and drove in 3-foot (1-meter) increments over small ramps covered with special static-control mats. Since these systems performed well under Earth's gravity, engineers expect them to perform well under Mars' gravity, which is only three-eighths as strong. The rover was also able to gather data with the Radar Imager for Mars' Subsurface Experiment (RIMFAX).

"A rover needs to rove, and Mars 2020 did that yesterday," said John McNamee, Mars 2020 project manager. "We can't wait to put some red Martian dirt under its wheels."

Mars 2020 Spacecraft Comes Full Circle

Engineers took NASA's Mars 2020 for a spin on Aug. 29, 2019. The 2,300-pound (1,040-kilogram) Martian vehicle was rotated clockwise and counterclockwise at about 1 revolution per minute on what is called a spin table in the clean room of the Spacecraft Assembly Facility at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The engineers were looking for the rover's center of gravity, or the point at which weight is evenly dispersed on all sides. Establishing the rover's center of gravity is a key part of the assembly process and helps ensure that the spacecraft travels smoothly from launch to entry, descent and landing on Mars as calculated. Engineers can add weights in order to help balance out the vehicle. In the end, they affixed nine tungsten weights totaling 44 pounds (20 kilograms) to the rover chassis at predetermined attachment points to get the center of gravity just right. "The spin table process is similar to how a gas station would balance a new tire before putting it on your car," said Lemil Cordero, Mars 2020 mass properties engineer at JPL. "We rotate the rover back and forth and look for asymmetries in its mass distribution. Then, similar to your gas station putting small weights on the tire's rim to bring it into balance, we'll put small balance masses on the rover in specific locations to get its center of gravity exactly where we want it." This was the assembled rover's first spin table test to determine its center of gravity; a second and final spin table test will occur at a NASA facility at Cape Canaveral in Florida next spring. JPL is building and will manage operations of the Mars 2020 rover for NASA. The rover will launch on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket in July 2020 from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral. NASA's Launch Services Program, based at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is responsible for launch management.

When the rover lands at Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021, it will be the first spacecraft in the history of planetary exploration with the ability to accurately retarget its point of touchdown during the landing sequence.

Chinese lunar rover's "lucky" find could unlock secrets of moon and earth

China's Yutu-2, the first rover on the far side of the moon, has found materials from deep inside the moon that could help unravel the mystery of the lunar mantle composition and the formation and evolution of the moon and the earth. Using data obtained by the visible and near infrared spectrometer installed on Yutu-2, a research team led by Li Chunlai, with the National Astronomical Observatories of China under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, found that the lunar soil in the landing area of the Chang'e-4 probe contains olivine and pyroxene which came from the lunar mantle deep inside the moon. The first important scientific discovery of the Chang'e-4 probe since it made the first-ever soft landing on the far side of the moon was published online in the latest issue of the academic journal Nature. The moon comprises a core, mantle and crust, like the earth. With the evolution of lunar magma, the light plagioclase rose to the upper layer to form the lunar crust, while the heavier olivine and pyroxene sank to form the lunar mantle, Li said. "But since the lunar crust is very thick, and there has been no volcanic activity and plate movement on the moon for billions of years, it's hard to find materials from the lunar mantle on the surface," Li said. The composition of the lunar mantle has long been the subject of theory. Neither the lunar samples from missions by the United States and Soviet Union, nor the remote sensing probes orbiting the moon have provided direct evidence of the accurate composition of the lunar mantle. Chinese scientists focused on a special area on the far side of the moon - the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) Basin, which was formed by a celestial collision over 4 billion years ago. With a diameter of 2,500 km and a depth of about 13 km, the basin is the oldest and largest impact crater on the moon.

After Chang'e-4 successfully landed on the Von Karman Crater in SPA Basin on Jan. 3 this year, the Yutu-2 rover obtained good quality spectral data at two sites.

"The data, unlike that obtained by Yutu on the near side of the moon, gave us a pleasant surprise," said Li.

Analysis showed the lunar soil in the landing area contains a large amount of olivine, low-calcium pyroxene and a small amount of high-calcium pyroxene, which are very likely from the lunar mantle, Li said.

So how did the materials from deep inside the moon get there?

After analyzing the high-resolution remote sensing images and the hyperspectral data, the researchers believed the materials were ejected from a 72-km-wide crater named Finsen to the northeast of the Von Karman Crater.

Li explained that after the SPA Basin was formed, more small asteroids crashed into the area, leading to more small craters. The collision that caused the Finsen Crater might have been so violent that the materials were knocked into the Von Karman Crater.

When scientists were selecting the landing site for Chang'e-4, flat areas were given priority. However, most of the flat areas on the moon are basalt formed as magma solidified.

It was lucky that Chang'e-4 probe landed in a region where the basalt is covered by lunar mantle debris.

"Furthermore, the rover is driving at the edge of the ejecta. According to our calculation, it might reach the basalt area in another 2 km or so. When it reaches the basalt area, we can compare the composition of the different lunar soils," Li said.

He said the study could provide a reference for a future mission to collect and return with samples and even the construction of a lunar base.

If the planned Chang'e-6 probe can go to that area, it would not only get the first-ever sample from the far side of the moon, but also have the chance to collect samples of materials coming from deep inside the moon, Li said.

"Most of the evolution of the moon happened about 3 billion years ago, while the early history of Earth before 3 billion years ago has been erased by geological activities. The moon is like a fossil that gives a glimpse of the early history of Earth," Li added.

China unveils Chang'e-4 rover to explore Moon's far side

China's moon lander and rover for the Chang'e-4 lunar probe, which is expected to land on the far side of the moon this year, was unveiled Wednesday. Images displayed at Wednesday's press conference showed the rover was a rectangular box with two foldable solar panels and six wheels. It is 1.5 meters long, 1 meter wide and 1.1 meters high.Wu Weiren, the chief designer of China's lunar probe program, said the Chang'e-4 rover largely kept the shape and conditions of its predecessor, Yutu (Jade Rabbit), China's first lunar rover for the Chang'e-3 lunar probe in 2013. However, it also has adaptable parts and an adjustable payload configuration to deal with the complex terrain on the far side of the moon, the demand of relay communication, and the actual needs of the scientific objectives, according to space scientists. Like Yutu, the rover will be equipped with four scientific payloads, including a panoramic camera, infrared imaging spectrometer and radar measurement devices, to obtain images of moon's surface and detect lunar soil and structure. It will also endure vacuum, intense radiation and extremes of temperature. The moon has a large temperature difference between day and night, which can reach more than 300 degrees Celsius.

Both the lander and rover will carry international payloads for other countries.

The Chang'e-4 lunar probe will land on the Aitken Basin of the lunar south pole region on the far side of the moon, which is a hot spot for scientific and space exploration.

Direct communication with the far side of the moon, however, is not possible, which is one of the many challenges for the Chang'e-4 lunar probe mission.

China launched a relay satellite, named Queqiao, in May, to set up a communication link between the Earth and Chang'e-4 lunar probe.

The global public will have a chance to name the rover, according to State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense.

Participants can submit their proposed names for the rover through the internet from Aug. 15 to Sept. 5, and the official name will be announced in October after several selection rounds.

Winners will be rewarded at most 3,000 yuan and invited to watch the lunar probe launch.

The name Yutu was chosen from 200,000 proposals submitted over two months worldwide.