Plenty of questions came to mind for those who took a close look at the diorama China used as a backdrop to a model of its lunar rover, Jade Rabbit, when it went on display last month at the China International Industry Fair in Shanghai.
Behind the rover, set up on a mock moonscape, is an oversized picture of the Earth from space – with a nuclear bomb going off in the area that would be Europe.
In the above image of the display, which DefenseTech found on a Hunan Province government website, the rover is blocking the nuclear explosion. In the other photo – a detail from the original image used to create the display – the distinctive mushroom cloud is clearly visible.
As far as we’ve been able to tell from monitoring some of the media buzz on this, the Chinese government has offered no explanation. The original is a stock photo available by download to anyone, Epoch Times reported last week.
Okay, so it’s possible those responsible for setting up the display didn’t look closely enough at the Earth image to notice that something, well, unpleasant was happening in Europe.
You’d also have to assume that the art director or technicians who found and acquired it for the display did not read English, since the image is called “Nuclear Explosion on Earth from Space.”
China launched Jade Rabbit – Yutu in Chinese – on Dec. 1. It marked China’s first soft landing on the Moon. Yutu, which has been sending back video and still images from the lunar surface, is named for a pet rabbit belonging to Chang-e, goddess of the moon in Chinese mythology.
Yutu touched down on the moon Dec. 14.