Chang’e, moon goddess, reaching for her pet Jade Rabbit. Image: wikimedia commons

“The Moon has prepared a long dream for me,” messaged the mythic messenger. Chang’e space mission landed Jade Rabbit on the lunar surface in December 2013. Nick-named ‘Yutu,’ mascot of the moon goddess of Chinese legend, Jade Rabbit’s Weibo account shared thousands of messages and cartoons during 31 months’ exploration of the lunarscape. The view was good: “I’m the rabbit that has seen the most stars,” tweeted the rover with a personal following of 600, 000 fans. Jade Rabbit Yutu is not lonely up there; 60 American and Russian space rovers are parked. And somewhere are two golf balls (Alan Shepard, American Apollo astronaut, teed the lunar green). And China will be back, Yutu, returning in 2017.

Building the World Blog by Kathleen Lusk Brooke and Zoe G Quinn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License