Chang'e 4 Trivia Questions

That's false—Chang'e 4 is a lander and rover; sample return was done later by Chang'e 5 in 2020, not Chang'e 4.

It landed in the South Pole-Aitken Basin on January 3, 2019, making history as the first soft landing on the Moon's far side.

No, the landing timing was not tied to a solar eclipse. It landed in early January 2019, chosen for orbital dynamics, not eclipse conditions.

Because the far side never faces Earth, Queqiao orbits a Lagrange point to relay signals between the lander and mission control.

Yutu-2 uses solar panels and radioisotope heaters, not a nuclear battery. It hibernates during the two-week-long lunar night.

It included a sealed container with cotton, rapeseed, potato seeds, and fruit fly eggs to test plant growth in lunar gravity.

While Chang'e 4 has a retroreflector, it's for laser ranging experiments, not primarily for distance measurement—a similar myth exists about Apollo reflectors.

In 2019, Yutu-2 spotted a dark, greenish, gel-like material—likely impact-melted glass—in a small crater.