Yutu in trouble?

[Zakalwe]

It looks like the Chinese Lunar rover has hit some problems

http://www.universetoday.com/108576/yutu-rover-suffers-significant-setback-at-start-of-2nd-lunar-night/

"The abnormality occurred due to the “complicated lunar surface environment,” said the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence (SASTIND) in a brief statement, without giving further details, according to the paper" I wonder if that's an oblique reference to the problem of Lunar dust? Was it Gene Cernan that described the dust as the biggest technological obstacle to a long-term Lunar mission. 

Here's one solution to the problem:
http://blog.chron.com/sciguy/2013/12/if-we-ever-go-back-to-the-moon-how-are-we-going-to-cope-with-its-hidden-hazard/
to prevent astronauts looking like they've just come back from a shift down t'pit

[ka9q]

I tend to listen to Cernan, if only because he's one of a very few people who's actually been there, and who was there the longest. Dust does look like a very serious problem, but much of that probably came on Apollo because no one had really thought about it. They were worried about so many other problems that turned out to be non-problems, like micrometeroids or being able to physiologically adapt to weightlessness and reduced gravity. But that's the nature of engineering in the unknown.

[Zakalwe]

It looks like Yutu is in serious trouble now   

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/175410-chinas-lunar-rover-yutu-says-goodnight-humanity-in-creepy-farewell-letter-before-freezing-to-death

[raven]

Is it just me, or has this anthropomorphizing of space probes only really started with the explosion of social media on the Internet?

[Luckmeister]

Is it just me, or has this anthropomorphizing of space probes only really started with the explosion of social media on the Internet?

This has been a natural tendency for people for a long time. I remember writers attaching human attributes to Sputnik in 1957.
 
If I hear one more reference to "angry suns" on pop-sci tv, I may go postal. 

[raven]

Oh, absolute, but what I meant was from a public relations standpoint, in particular the use of a space craft persona, giving it an 'I' in released material.

[Echnaton]

When spacecraft have personal Twitter pages, it seems only right to allow them something of an individual personality.  https://twitter.com/ESA_Rosetta

[ka9q]

Well, if it means anything I'm also annoyed by overly anthromorphizing non-living and non-sentient devices, even if they are very sophisticated and interesting otherwise.

[Noldi400]

Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer dooo.........

[raven]

Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer dooo.........

In a semi-interesting bit of trivia, that song was chosen because it was the first song sung by a voice synthesiser in human history. It's both eerie and endearing.

[ka9q]

I have no problem with websites and twitter pages for robotic spacecraft to get the public more engaged. But why not just let the people on the project express their personalities? Certainly they're excited about their spacecraft and what it's doing, otherwise they wouldn't be working on it.

I'd think most members of the public would have an easier time connecting with a flesh-and-blood human, even an engineer, than a cutesy made-up "persona" that would, I think, insult the intelligence of all but very young children. But that's just my opinion.