The mysterious tent-like object photographed by China’s Yutu-2 rover is actually a rock shaped like a rabbit.
The object compared to a tent in the picture taken by the Yutu-2 rover. (Photo: CNSA).
The research team responsible for the Yutu-2 project announced their findings after the rover thoroughly examined the object on January 7. They named the rock after the rover itself.
The object first appeared in the Yutu-2 rover’s camera view in December 2021, when the vehicle detected a blurry box-shaped object on the horizon. Yutu-2 is the first rover to explore the far side of the Moon, an area that does not face Earth and features a rugged terrain with more craters than the rest of the Moon. Due to the object’s unusual symmetrical shape with a flat top, the research team from the China National Space Administration’s Our Space program jokingly referred to it as an alien tent.
After a month of traveling from its initial observation point to get closer to the object, the rover sent detailed images back to Earth. In reality, the rock is much smaller than it appeared from a distance and is also rounder. The object resembles a rabbit nibbling on a carrot. “The rabbit-shaped rock is quite small, so it may disappoint some people. Due to the original photo’s lack of perspective, many hoped it would be a large structure like the Arc de Triomphe,” journalist Andrew Jones shared on Twitter.
After classifying the rock, the Yutu-2 rover will continue to explore the Von Kármán crater, which is 186 km wide. The rover has been investigating this area since the Chang’e 4 spacecraft gently landed on the far side of the Moon in January 2019. This is the longest-operating lunar exploration rover. Yutu-2 has studied the porous layer of soil at least 40 meters deep on the Moon’s surface and examined a strangely colored gel-like substance in one crater, which is melted rock from an ancient meteorite impact.
