Chinese Rover to Investigate ‘Mysterious Hut’ Spotted on Far Side of Moon

An intriguing object that seems cube-shaped has attracted the eye of scientists engaged on China’s Chang’e 4 mission on the far aspect of the Moon.

Juxtaposed in opposition to the blackness of house, the thing sticks up from the horizon like a sore thumb. It’s virtually begging the Yutu 2 rover to return on over and say hello—and mission controllers with the Chang’e 4 mission appear prepared to oblige, according to Our Space, a Chinese language science outreach channel affiliated with China National Space Administration (CNSA).

The “mysterious hut,” as Our Space describes it, was noticed in Von Kármán crater within the South Pole-Aitken Basin. This spot on the far aspect of the Moon is the place Yutu 2 has been working because the mission landed tright here on January 3, 2019.

Mission controllers commanded the six-wheeled car to scan the encompassing skyline when “an obtrusive cube on the northern skyline attracted their attention,” as Our Space writes (as translated by Google). “Was it a home built by aliens after a crash landing? Or is it the pioneer spacecraft of predecessors to explore the Moon?,” the put up continues.

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They’re in all probability joking—or no less than, I hope they’re joking—however Andrew Jones, a correspondent with SpaceInformation who covers China’s house program, supplied a extra restrained take, tweeting that “it’s not an obelisk or aliens, but certainly something to check out,” including that giant boulders “are sometimes excavated by impacts.”

The true shape of this object is hard to discern, and its oddly geometric proportions could be the result of pixelation—a visual artifact seen in low-resolution images. (Visual artifacts are always a cause to consider when something particularly surprising shows up in space imagery, like this beam of light spotted on Mars in 2014.)

This isn’t the primary bizarre factor to be noticed in the course of the Chang’e 4 mission that turned out to be nothing. And by nothing, I imply rocks. Back in September 2019, Yutu 2 encountered a inexperienced and glistening gel-like substance—not the sort of factor you’d anticipate a rover to seek out on the Moon—that turned out to be impact melt breccia—rock fragments cemented collectively as the results of excessive warmth. More not too long ago, the rover noticed unusual shards protruding from the floor that turned out to be rocks tossed out from an affect. So the percentages of the thriller hut being a rock or boulder are spectacularly good.

Still, it would be smart to investigate this object further just to make sure, and that’s apparently what’s going to happen. Our Space says the object is located 260 feet (80 meters) from the rover’s current location and that it’ll take Yutu 2 around two to three months to reach it.

The Chang’e 4 mission has already resulted in some cool new science, such as the discovery of mantle material on the Moon’s far side, and this latest distraction is a fun bonus. We look forward to seeing this apparent boulder in more detail, but in the meantime we can all secretly hope that Yutu 2 will stumble upon something far more exotic, like an alien probe or the remnants of an interstellar spaceship.

More: The weirdest images ever taken on Mars.