China Moon Rover Will Investigate Cube-shaped 'Mystery' Object on Lunar Far Side

The Yutu-2 rover is on a roll. It's been exploring the far side of the moon since early 2019 as part of China's Chang'e-4 lunar lander mission. It now has its eyes set on a strange-looking cube-shaped object it spotted in the distance. From a report: Andrew Jones, a journalist who covers the Chinese space program for SpaceNews and Space.com, highlighted a new rover update in a series of tweets Friday. The nickname for the cube-shaped object translates to "mystery house." The rover team is planning to drive over and get a closer look at the object. As with Yutu-2's intriguing discovery of a "gel-like" substance inside a crater in 2019, don't get too excited for aliens. That substance turned out to be glassy-looking rock. And as far as I know, Stanley Kubrick never planted a monolith on the real moon, and those metal sculptures that were once all the rage on Earth haven't made the trek across space. Yutu-2's view of the cube is fuzzy and far-off, so the object's true nature should become clearer as the rover gets closer. The most likely explanation is a boulder. This part of the moon is pockmarked with impact craters, which can feature quite a bit of chunky debris.

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