China’s lunar rover Yutu’s social media debut, which began the day before the rover’s Dec. 2, 2013 launch, has been a smash hit in China: Yutu has garnered more than 9 million Weibo mentions, and of those sampled by FP, most are positive. Staid state-owned media like news service Xinhua  have published. Yutu’s Weibo tweets as if they were the official announcements from mission control.

One Weibo user wrote that when he learned from a BBC report that Yutu had ceased operation, it was “the first time that national Chinese news had ever made me cry.” Among the outpouring of support for Yutu on China’s Internet, the few voices questioning the lunar mission have been effectively drowned out.   Giving Space Character