Photo: CNSA/Our Space
As far as we humans know, the Moon is a very barren and uninteresting place. And that couldn’t be more ironic, given how the place is essential to Earth’s (and its life forms') survival.
As one of the most studied places in the nigh sky, the Moon hardly seems capable of keeping any secrets from us. Or, should we add, that’s mostly true when it comes to the face of the space rock that is always facing our planet. As for the other one, the far side of the Moon, as it’s called, what we know about it is mostly guesswork for now.
Human eyes did fall on the far side of the Moon as far back as the Apollo 8 mission, but that’s about it. From the age of the Apollo program and until 2019, we kind of ignored the place, focused as we were doing our things in an orbit closer to our planet.
Then, in 2019, China sent to the far side of the Moon a piece of machinery called Chang'e-4. It landed there in the early days of the year, with the stated goal of identifying the composition of the soil in the region and learn more about the place we here on Earth never get to see.
Oh, and it also carried with it a canister containing a total of six organisms – (potato, Arabidopsis, rapeseed, cotton, yeast, and fruit flies), just to see if plants can use photosynthesis in alien environments and if flies can do whatever it is they do.
In its journey across the surface of the satellite, the Chang'e-4 spotted some peculiar things since that time (all meanwhile explained by science), but the thing we have here beats them all: an "obtrusive cube" that, according to a Chinese website “pierced through the winding of the skyline, like a mysterious hut that appeared out of thin air."
You can see the piece of mystery in the main photo of this piece, almost smack down in the center of the image and very far away from the rover. Well, not that far, as the Chinese say the whatever-it-is was located at about 80 meters (262 feet) when the photo was taken.
Curious about their finding, the Chinese instructed the rover to head over to the mysterious "hut" and investigate. The distance may not seem like much, but we’re told it’ll take the machine up to three months to reach it and discover it's a piece of worthless rock.
Unless it’s a Borg Cube, and it'll either fly away or destroy the rover…
Human eyes did fall on the far side of the Moon as far back as the Apollo 8 mission, but that’s about it. From the age of the Apollo program and until 2019, we kind of ignored the place, focused as we were doing our things in an orbit closer to our planet.
Then, in 2019, China sent to the far side of the Moon a piece of machinery called Chang'e-4. It landed there in the early days of the year, with the stated goal of identifying the composition of the soil in the region and learn more about the place we here on Earth never get to see.
Oh, and it also carried with it a canister containing a total of six organisms – (potato, Arabidopsis, rapeseed, cotton, yeast, and fruit flies), just to see if plants can use photosynthesis in alien environments and if flies can do whatever it is they do.
In its journey across the surface of the satellite, the Chang'e-4 spotted some peculiar things since that time (all meanwhile explained by science), but the thing we have here beats them all: an "obtrusive cube" that, according to a Chinese website “pierced through the winding of the skyline, like a mysterious hut that appeared out of thin air."
You can see the piece of mystery in the main photo of this piece, almost smack down in the center of the image and very far away from the rover. Well, not that far, as the Chinese say the whatever-it-is was located at about 80 meters (262 feet) when the photo was taken.
Curious about their finding, the Chinese instructed the rover to head over to the mysterious "hut" and investigate. The distance may not seem like much, but we’re told it’ll take the machine up to three months to reach it and discover it's a piece of worthless rock.
Unless it’s a Borg Cube, and it'll either fly away or destroy the rover…
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