Skip to main content
https://www.highperformancecpmgate.com/rgeesizw1?key=a9d7b2ab045c91688419e8e18a006621

Remember That Weird 'Cube' on The Moon? Yutu-2 Finally Took Closer Pictures

 

moon cube-moon-nasa
The Yutu-2 image of the ‘mysterious hut’. (CNSA/CLEP/Our Space)
The mysterious Chinese “moon cube” is no longer a mystery. The big reveal: it's a rock that doesn't even have the shape of a cube. National rover Yutu2  discovered the object - which appeared to be a gray cube looming above the lunar horizon - in early December. China's National Space Administration (CNSA) dubbed it the “mystery hut,” playfully speculating that the cube could be an alien house or a spaceship.
 The news called it the "moon cube".

 The CNSA estimated that the object was about 80 meters (262 feet) away, according to the blog  affiliated with the agency, and ready to point the rover towards it. The blog said it would take two or three months to reach the cube.
 After several weeks of preparation and driving, the rover is close enough to see that the "mystery hut" is just a rock. Its sharp geometric aspect on the horizon was a simple turn of perspective, light and shadow.

In an updated posted on Friday, Our Space published the rover's latest photo of its target, below.

moon cube-moon-nasa
Yutu-2 image of the closer rock. (CNSA/CLEP/Our Space)


One of the rover's ground controllers noted on the blog that the rock is shaped like a rabbit, with smaller rocks in front  that resemble a carrot. The rover's name, Yutu, means "jade rabbit," which is now also the name of the rock too.

Yutu2 reached the moon in January 2019, when the Chang'e4 lander landed on the lunar surface and launched a ramp for the rover's descent. It was the first mission to land on the opposite side of the moon. 

Over the next three years, Yutu2 traveled over 1,000 meters (3,200 feet), used ground-penetrating radar to reveal a surprisingly deep layer of lunar soil, and identified rocks in the lunar mantle, below the crust, which have been pushed to the surface. when an asteroid crashed into the moon billions of years ago.
moon cube-moon-nasa
A closer look at the rock. (CNSA/CLEP/Our Space)


The rover has survived long past its initial three-month mission, meaning Yutu-2 had plenty free time for a wild cube chase.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Uber co-founder Garrett Camp steps back from board director role

Uber co-founder Garrett Camp is relinquishing his role as a board director and switching to board observer — where he says he’ll focus on product strategy for the ride hailing giant. Camp made the announcement in a short Medium post in which he writes of his decade at Uber: “I’ve learned a lot, and realized that I’m most helpful when focused on product strategy & design, and this is where I’d like to focus going forward.” “I will continue to work with Dara [Khosrowshahi, Uber CEO] and the product and technology leadership teams to brainstorm new ideas, iterate on plans and designs, and continue to innovate at scale,” he adds. “We have a strong and diverse team in place, and I’m confident everyone will navigate well during these turbulent times.” The Canadian billionaire entrepreneur signs off by saying he’s looking forward to helping Uber “brainstorm the next big idea”. Camp hasn’t been short of ideas over his career in tech. He’s the co-founder of the web 2.0 recommendatio
Post a Comment
Read more

Drone crash near kids leads Swiss Post and Matternet to suspend autonomous deliveries

A serious crash by a delivery drone in Switzerland have grounded the fleet and put a partnership on ice. Within a stone’s throw of a school, the incident raised grim possibilities for the possibilities of catastrophic failure of payload-bearing autonomous aerial vehicles. The drones were operated by Matternet as part of a partnership with the Swiss Post (i.e. the postal service), which was using the craft to dispatch lab samples from one medical center for priority cases. As far as potential applications of drone delivery, it’s a home run — but twice now the craft have crashed, first with a soft landing and the second time a very hard one. The first incident, in January, was the result of a GPS hardware error; the drone entered a planned failback state and deployed its emergency parachute, falling slowly to the ground. Measures were taken to improve the GPS systems. The second failure in May, however, led to the drone attempting to deploy its parachute again, only to sever the line
Post a Comment
Read more

ProtonMail logged IP address of French activist after order by Swiss authorities

ProtonMail , a hosted email service with a focus on end-to-end encrypted communications, has been facing criticism after a police report showed that French authorities managed to obtain the IP address of a French activist who was using the online service. The company has communicated widely about the incident, stating that it doesn’t log IP addresses by default and it only complies with local regulation — in that case Swiss law. While ProtonMail didn’t cooperate with French authorities, French police sent a request to Swiss police via Europol to force the company to obtain the IP address of one of its users. For the past year, a group of people have taken over a handful of commercial premises and apartments near Place Sainte Marthe in Paris. They want to fight against gentrification, real estate speculation, Airbnb and high-end restaurants. While it started as a local conflict, it quickly became a symbolic campaign. They attracted newspaper headlines when they started occupying prem
Post a Comment
Read more