The life of China’s Jade Rabbit lunar rover was a good long one. It collected data for nearly three years, which was quite long in comparison to the three-month supposed mission. The spacecraft went dark for the last time on July 28.

Jade Rabbit was the first rover to reach on the moon since 1973, and arrived there in December 2013 with a mission to collect data for 90 days. Since then, it has been a huge contributor to the space program of the country by giving lessons to Chinese scientists regarding the creation of a similar spacecraft, and via the scientific findings it communicated home.

The Agence France-Presse reported that the lunar rover mentioned in a message on its official social media account, “There are still many questions I would like answers too, but I'm the rabbit that has seen the most stars! The moon says it has prepared a long, long dream for me”.

Jade Rabbit, or Yutu, has been dubbed after a Chinese myth regarding a pet white rabbit, belonging to the goddess of the moon. It was named through an online poll.

The lunar lander was taken to the moon on the Chang’e 3 spacecraft. Previously two missions had orbited the moon, but Jade Rabbit was the first attempt made by the Chinese space agency for a soft landing on the moon.

Jade Rabbit had come up with numerous interesting discoveries, among them was that it found proof that the moon has been astonishingly geologically active in the past 3.3 billion years.

On the moon, Yutu scientists recorded nine different rock layers. The lunar rover also investigated a huge a crater known as C1 around its landing site, detecting clues that it was an outcome of massive impact between 80 million and 27 million years back.