After weeks of anticipation, China’s Yutu 2 rover has lastly reached an intriguing object that appeared on the lunar horizon final December, revealing it to be nothing greater than an irregularly formed rock.

Space exploration is enjoyable as a result of it lets our imaginations run wild. When bizarre and inexplicable issues all of the sudden seem—like a looming form the far facet of the Moon—we will’t assist however hope it’s a beforehand unknown celestial phenomenon or the discarded remnant of an alien spaceship. Meanwhile, the rational components of our mind remind us of Occam’s razor, the dictum that implores us to hunt out the only clarification.

In the case of the so-called “mystery hut,” we all the time knew it was a rock, and I stated as a lot again in early December. But we wished iron-clad proof, and now we now have it, as Our Space, a Chinese-language science outreach channel affiliated with China National Space Administration, reports.

China’s Yutu 2 rover was exploring Von Kármán crater within the South Pole-Aitken Basin when it noticed the “obtrusive cube,” as Our Space described it. Mission controllers determined to take a better look, sending the rover on a 328-foot (100-meter) journey towards the northern horizon.

The diminutive six-wheeled rover neared the thing in a collection of fastidiously orchestrated jaunts, the longest of which coated practically 40 ft (12 meters). And in reality, the longest of those stints resulted in Yutu 2 breaking its personal single-excursion distance report. After passing a pair of influence craters, and having pushed a complete of 196 ft (60 meters), the rover needed to be positioned in hibernation mode to outlive the frigid lunar night time.

When Yutu 2 awoke on the morning of the mission’s thirty eighth lunar day—December 27 on Earth—it nonetheless had 98 ft (30 meters) to go, requiring one other three drive sessions. This week, Yutu 2 lastly got here inside 33 ft (10 meters) of the thing, prompting mission controllers to take a panoramic view of the scene.

This subsequently revealed the thing’s true id: a rock. As Our Space studies, the staff “couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed,” however one member exclaimed: “My God! This is Yutu!”

Yutu means “jade rabbit,” and the rock does kinda appear to be a crouched rabbit, with its giant ears at high proper and face wanting down onto the lunar floor. It’s one other good instance of pareidolia.

As of January 6, Yutu 2 has clocked a full kilometer (0.6 miles) of distance traveled since touchdown on the far facet of the Moon on January 3, 2019 as a part of the Chang’e 4 mission. On January 11, the rover will have fun three years of exploring the lunar floor. Our Space says Yutu 2 will quickly enter into hibernation mode once more, after which it should proceed to discover the rock and the influence crater instantly behind it.

More: The weirdest pictures ever taken on Mars.