Something strange is happening on the Moon. While exploring the Von Kármán crater on the Moon’s unseen face, China’s Yutu 2 rover spotted a bizarre object on the horizon. In the very blurry image, a cubic structure can be seen in a relatively featureless landscape.
In a post on social network Weixin, China’s National Space Administration (CNSA) called the structure a “mysterious hut“.
“Was it a house built by aliens after the crash? Or is it a spacecraft of the predecessors who explored the moon,” officials wrote in the somewhat tongue-in-cheek post.
There are some clues as to the identity of the mysterious cube on the Moon’s unseen face
Most likely, none of the explanations is the right answer, but we do know that the Moon has rocks in abundance. We won’t know for sure until China’s rover gets close to the mysterious structure, a distance of 80 metres that will take two or three months to travel.
That’s because the solar-powered rover has to shut down its operations during the two-week lunar night and when the sun is directly overhead to prevent overheating. The rover also has to move at slow speeds because of the rugged and dangerous terrain of our natural satellite.
Even so, there are some clues as to the cube’s identity. For example, it could be a recent impact crater. This suggests that the bizarre object could be a boulder excavated during impact, a phenomenon previously observed on the Moon, Science Alert writes.
Not the first oddity observed by the Yutu 2 rover
This is not the first oddity observed by the Yutu 2 rover on the unseen face of the Moon. In 2019, the rover discovered a strange substance described as “gel-like”. The substance turned out to be molten moon rock turned to glass by an impact. The moon, not being protected by an atmosphere, gets hit regularly.
If it is a boulder excavated from beneath the lunar surface, we may learn more about the Moon’s composition. So CNSA scientists are looking forward to the rover reaching the ‘mystery hut’.
The structure was observed by the Yutu 2 rover on day 36 of lunar operations. Currently, the rover is on lunar day 37 after landing in January 2019. Originally planned to last three months, the Yutu 2 rover and Chang’e 4 spacecraft are now nearing the end of their third year of operations and are continuing to hold out.
