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China moon rover will investigate cube-shaped 'mystery' object on lunar far side

Is that a boulder? Or something else?

Amanda Kooser
Freelance writer Amanda C. Kooser covers gadgets and tech news with a twist for CNET. When not wallowing in weird gear and iPad apps for cats, she can be found tinkering with her 1956 DeSoto.
Amanda Kooser
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That distant, somewhat cube-shaped object is the "mystery house" China's Yutu-2 rover is planning to take a closer look at.

Photo by CNSA

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.  

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.

The Chang'e-4 mission represents the first surface exploration of the far side of the moon. The rover's work has helped scientists learn about what's happening with the geology under the lunar surface.   

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Don't look to Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon for scientific information about the lunar far side. China's rover is solar-powered, so it periodically goes into hibernation when it's dark and then gets back to work when the sun is out in the Von Karman crater.

According China Daily, Yutu-2 has already traveled 2,756 feet (840 meters) across the moon. Its next jaunt should shed some light on the "mystery house."