The United States is worried that China's lunar probe "Jade Rabbit" may have run over Armstrong's footprints. Will this happen?

In normal operational terms, the probability of a rover accidentally driving across Apollo footprints is very low. Lunar surface missions are not conducted by random wandering. Routes are planned around terrain, engineering constraints, communication windows, and mission objectives. Since the Apollo landing sites are known, they can in principle be treated as protected coordinates during navigation planning.

The deeper issue, however, is not whether one rover will carelessly roll over one set of footprints. The deeper issue is governance. As more countries and companies begin operating on the Moon, historic human sites will face cumulative risks: plume effects from nearby landings, dust disturbance, equipment placement, surface traffic, and the simple absence of universally binding rules. In that sense, the real challenge is legal and political before it is mechanical.

So the answer is twofold. Technically, the risk is manageable because heritage avoidance can be built into mission design. Institutionally, protection is still underdeveloped because humanity has expanded its presence faster than it has built a shared framework for preserving extraterrestrial heritage. If people care seriously about the Apollo traces, then they should care not only about rover wheels, but also about the rules that will govern the next century of lunar activity.

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