text: More than two years after China’s lunar rover got away to a wonky start on the surface of the moon, the country’s National Space Administration has released the stunning hi-def pictures it took. 
   
   On December 14, 2013, Yutu, or “Jade Rabbit” became the third unmanned spacecraft to land on the moon. But within a month, the rover started having some problems preparing for the lunar nights, and was losing its precious solar power supplies. 
   
   It stopped moving on January 25, 42 days into a three-month mission. 
   
   By mid-February, Chinese officials had to face the fact that Jade Rabbit wasn’t going anywhere further but remarkably, it kept transmitting information until the end of October last year. 
   
   Despite the fact it had been immobile and transmitting exactly the same observation for nearly 20 months, Jade Rabbit still technically claimed the record for the longest operational period of a rover on the moon, surpassing that of the Soviet Lunakhod rover. 
   
   Nevertheless, while it never quite managed to traverse the three square kilometres intended, Jade Rabbit still took load of snaps. Up until now, the agency has only released a handful, but now there’s hundreds publicly available, and they’re in spectacular HD. ||||| Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period. ||||| Story highlights China makes public high-resolution photos taken by its lunar lander and rover 
   
   They show the moon's crust in vivid detail 
   
   It's a show of openness for the country's usually secretive space program 
   
   Beijing (CNN) China has released hundreds of high-resolution photos taken by its Chang'e-3 lunar lander and rover, showing the moon's surface in vivid detail. 
   
   The China National Space Administration made the images, video clips and scientific data available on its website in a rare show of openness for the country's usually secretive space program. 
   
   China sent its first unmanned lunar probe, the Yutu, or "Jade Rabbit," to the moon in 2013 as part of its Chang'e-3 mission, becoming only the third nation after the United States and Russia to land on the moon's surface. 
   
   Despite a shaky start to its mission, the Jade Rabbit is still working and sending images and data back to earth. 
   
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target: – Its mission had a rocky start, but China's Jade Rabbit moon rover is now sending back some nifty high-resolution images of the lunar surface, reports CNN. China has made them available to download here, though Business Insider finds the process "frustratingly complicated." Luckily, it adds, Emily Lakdawalla of the Planetary Society has done much of the heavy lifting, so head here if you'd like to see many, many more.