Chang'e-4 lander powered down at 16:00 UTC Thursday 11 April ahead of a 4th lunar night in Von Kármán crater. Yutu-2 followed at 16:38 UTC. Both craft are expected to awaken on April 28 UTC.

Thursday saw a ceremony in Beijing for the handover of the first science data to representatives for the mission payloads from Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands.

The southern Chinese city of Zhuhai will host a Lunar and Deep Space Exploration conference in July, where it is hoped some of the first results from Chang’e-4 science payloads will be released.

Other Chang’e-4 announcements could come on or around China’s fourth annual ‘space day’, which is marked on 24 April to commemorate the country’s first orbital launch on that date in 1970.

On Wednesday a poster for the upcoming occasion was unveiled, which features the mythological Chinese goddess of the Moon, Chang’e, for which China’s robotic lunar missions are named. Also visible among the mix of symbolism from Chinese history and culture are some recent space-related achievements and a bridge of magpies, or ‘Queqiao’, the name given to the Chang’e-4 relay satellite.