China's moon rover "Yutu" - Jade Rabbit in English - and the Chang'e-3 lander have "woken up" after a period of dormancy that lasted two weeks, or one lunar night, in a move designed to ride out harsh climactic conditions.

Yutu awoke automatically at 5:09am Beijing Time on Saturday and has since finished necessary setting procedures and entered a normal working mode, following orders from the Beijing Aerospace Control Center (BACC), according to a statement issued by the BACC yesterday.

It has started its rove around the moon surface and conduct scientific missions.

Chang'e-3 was awakened automatically at 8:21am yesterday, the statement said.

One night on the moon lasts about 14 days on Earth, during which the temperature falls below minus 180 Celsius and there is no sunlight to provide power to the instruments' solar panels.

"During the lunar night, the lander and rover were in a power-off mode and communications with Earth were cut off," said Zhou Jianliang, chief engineer of the BACC.

"When the lunar night ended, they were started using energy provided by sunlight to resume operations and communications according to their preset programs," Zhou said.

The awakening of the rover and lander demonstrates the success of Chinese technology in surviving the lunar night, the chief engineer added.

Chang'e-3 soft-landed on the moon's Sinus Iridium, or the Bay of Rainbows, on December 14, and Yutu later separated from the lander.

The rover went to sleep on December 26 as the mission's first lunar night arrived.