Chang'e 5 was designed to operate on the lunar surface for up to how long?

• A. One lunar day
• B. Two lunar days
• C. One lunar month
• D. Indefinitely

Answer: (A)

On the Moon, daylight lasts about 14 Earth days at any given location, followed by a roughly equal-length night. Chang'e 5 used solar power to run its surface hardware, so it needed enough energy storage and thermal management to survive the long cold lunar night. Since the mission relied on solar energy and wasn’t equipped to endure the extended darkness, it was designed to operate only during a single lunar day. The other timing options would require powering and heating through multiple nights or an entire lunar month, which wasn’t feasible with this design. So the maximum surface operation time is limited to one lunar day.