China's Yutu-2 rover, exploring the Moon's far side, has encountered a peculiar elongated rock. Upcoming analyses will reveal its origins.
On January 3, 2019, the Chang'e-4 mission achieved a historic first by landing softly on the Moon's far side. The lander and Yutu-2 rover remain active in the Von Karman crater within the South Pole-Aitken Basin—the Solar System's largest impact crater.
After hibernating through the recent lunar night, both the lander and rover resumed operations on February 6. Earlier in the lunar day, Yutu-2 spotted a striking rock with an unusually elongated shape. While it may seem ordinary at first glance, lunar scientists are captivated by this find.
“This is really unusual,” Dan Moriarty, a planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, told Space.com. “Repeated impacts, thermal cycling stresses, and other forms of weathering on the lunar surface all tend to shatter rocks into more or less 'spherical' shapes, given enough time,” he explained.
Moriarty notes that the rock's form and prominent ridge suggest it's geologically young—possibly ejecta from a nearby crater rather than long-exposed bedrock.
The mission team, as reported by Our Space (a CNSA-affiliated science channel), deemed the rock worthy of detailed study. Yutu-2's Visible and Near Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (VNIS) will soon analyze light reflected from the rock to determine its composition.
“I hope the spectral data will allow an assessment of its origin, whether local or exotic, i.e., from outside this area,” said Clive Neal, a leading lunar geologist at the University of Notre Dame.
Remarkably, Yutu-2 and its lander have far outlasted their planned lifespans of 90 Earth days and one year, respectively. The rover has traveled 628 meters since deployment over two years ago.
