The Chinese rover Yutu 2, currently on the other side of the Moon, has indeed come across a strange little stone with a very elongated shape. Future analyzes will determine its origin.
On January 3, 2019, China's Chang'e-4 mission became the first to land smoothly on the far side of the Moon. The lander and its rover (Yutu 2) are currently still positioned in the Von Karman crater. You will find this formation in the South Pole-Aitken Basin, the largest impact crater in the Solar System.
Both machines resumed operations on February 6 after "hibernating" during the last lunar night. But a lunar day earlier, the rover came across a curious rock specimen with a very "elongated" shape. This stone might not look particularly exciting to the untrained eye. Among specialists, on the other hand, the discovery has aroused a lot of interest.
“This is really unusual” , Dan Moriarty, of the 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" , she continues.
According to the researcher, the shape of this stone, and the pronounced "ridge" near its edge, suggests that this rock is geologically young. This could include impact ejecta from a nearby crater, rather than just exposed rock.
The mission team agreed that this small stone deserved closer inspection, according to Our Space, the Chinese-language popular science channel affiliated with the China National Space Administration ( CNSA). The researchers plan to analyze it soon with Yutu 2's Visible and Near Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (VNIS), which detects light scattered or reflected on materials to reveal their composition.
“I hope the spectral data will allow an assessment of its origin, whether local or exotic, i.e. outside of this area” , points out Clive Neal, a leading lunar expert at the University of Notre Dame.
For their part, Yutu 2 and its lander have already well exceeded their nominal lifespans of 90 Earth days and one year, respectively. The rover, for its part, has already traveled a total of 628 meters since its deployment just over two years ago.
