China’s Chang’e 4 mission which combined both a lander and a rover called Yutu 2, was launched to the Moon on 7 December 2018.
After arriving in lunar orbit on December 12th, it orbited the Moon for a few weeks before landing on the Moon’s far side on January 3rd, 2019.
The solar-powered Yutu 2 and Chang’e 4 lander made the first ever landing on the far side of the moon.
Since then, the rover has been roaming across the 115-mile-wide (186 kilometers) Von Kármán crater on the far side.
The Von Kármán crater on the Moon’s Far side is circled in yellow in this screenshot from LunarPhase Pro. Click the image for a full-sized view.
And on its journey, the rover recently spotted a mysterious cube-shaped object.
China’s National Space Administration keeps a log of each of the rover’s lunar days, which is around 29 Earth days long.
On its 36th lunar day (which seems to have been in late November), the rover spotted a cube-shaped object on the horizon about 260 feet (about 80 metres) away.
You can see what the object looks like in the top image.
Apparently, the Chinese refer to it as “mystery hut”, but that’s likely just to be a placeholder name rather than an official designation.
Team scientists have expressed a strong interest in the object and Yutu 2 is now expected to spend the next 2-3 lunar days (that’s 2 to 3 Earth months) traversing lunar regolith and avoiding craters to get a closer look, so updates can be expected.
The most likely explanation for the object’s shape is that it’s a large boulder which has been excavated by an impact event.
Chang’e 4, like its name suggests, is China’s fourth moon mission and second to deliver a rover on the moon.
The Chang’e 1 and 2 missions were orbiters, with Chang’e 3 landing on the near side of the moon with the first Yutu rover.
China has also launched the Chang’e 5 T1 test mission around the moon and the Chang’e 5 moon sample return mission.
