Chinese robot detects strange object on the Moon

Newly shaped crystals found on the far side of the Moon reveal the object's history of collisions.

Rabbit Ngoc 2 robot in the photo taken from the Hang Nga 4 ship.

According to research recently published in Science Bulletin, the Jade Rabbit 2 probe robot on China's Chang'e 4 mission has captured faint images of two strange spherical crystals on the Moon's surface. by its panoramic camera.

No compositional data have been collected for these tiny spheres, but their unique morphology and surrounding context suggest that they originated from a meteorite impact, not from volcanic activity on the Earth's surface. Moon, the researchers said.

The Jade Rabbit 2 mission team compared the new images with volcanic glass beads sampled by the Apollo missions on the Moon in the past and found that they were not only smaller in size, but also different in color.

The glass beads discovered by the robot Rabbit Jade 2 (c,d) are smaller in size and lighter in color than the volcanic glass specimen (a, b) collected by the Apollo mission series.

The researchers predict that there will be many similar spherical glass beads on the lunar plateaus, providing a promising sampling target for examining the history of collisions in the early Moon.

The Thuong Nga 4 spacecraft and the Rabbit Ngoc 2 probe were launched on December 8, 2018 and made a soft landing in the Von Karman crater located in a large impact crater known as the Antarctic-Aitken basin in the South China Sea. far side of the Moon on January 3, 2019. Up to now, Rabbit Ngoc 2 has traveled more than 1,000m.