Staff Editor
It’s a little short to be a classic “alien monolith,” as described by Art Clarke in 2001: A Space Odyssey, but China’s “Jade Rabbit” rover, Yutu-2, rolled up on something really interesting recently. Of course, nothing this exciting has ever been seen on the face of Luna that we look at every night.
Rover finds Moon ‘mystery house’
Because Luna, one of the two moons we now officially have, is “tidal locked” with the Earth, it always has the same side facing us. The only way to see the other side is go there and find out.
The Chinese sent a robot rover officially named Yutu-2 which has been happily wandering the dark side of the Moon for almost three years now. “Jade Rabbit,” the English translation of Yutu, became the “first probe ever” to land on the far side, in January 2019.
Speculation has been running rampant ever since the rover captured images of “an intriguing cube-shaped object” on the edge of the lunar horizon.
China National Space Administration was quick to dub the thing a “mystery house.” The experts all say don’t get your hopes up too high because it’s probably an ordinary rock.
Just to make everyone happy, the rover will hippity-hop across the crater for a closer look. The Chinese love all the attention they’ve been getting so they’re happy to play along.
The discovery, they say may represent “a home built by aliens after crash landing.” Then again, it may represent a rock. Once again, only one way to find out, go there and look.
Von Kármán crater
Even though the Yutu-2 has been grazing the lunar landscape for three years, it’s only been 36 lunar days.
For the entire time, Jade Rabbit rover has been beaming home data and images from the Von Kármán crater. That’s “where it spotted the strange item on the northern horizon last month.”
In an infinite universe, anything is possible. Most likely the big rock won’t be the entrance to an alien Lunar colony, just another block of basalt blasted out by meteorite impact. There are lots of those laying around everywhere.
Because there’s not a whole lot of air on the Moon, it has zero protection from space rocks, “which means it is constantly being walloped by hurtling pieces of debris” That’s why there are so many impact craters on the surface.
They plot the location of the strange block “close to several such craters.” The team of engineers in charge of driving the rover say it “will now make a beeline towards it in order to confirm its identity.”
While that sounds like an easy feat, considering the rabbit is a mere 260 feet away from the object now, “the rover’s approach is expected to take two to three lunar days (two to three Earth months), as the way is treacherous and riddled with obstacles.”
The Jade Rabbit can’t hop, even in the one-sixth gravity. Another problem is it eats sunshine. “the fact that Yutu-2 is solar powered means that it has to shut down completely during the long lunar nights, thus adding to its journey time considerably.” Speculation is rampant that when the sun rises it will shine through a large pyramid prism…
