The image is from Our Space.
A mysterious "moon hut" spotted by China's lunar Yutu 2 rover is actually an adorable rabbit-shaped rock.
The Yutu 2 team nicknamed the rock "jade rabbit" because of its close inspection on Friday. The rover's name, Yutu, also means "jade rabbit."
The object was first seen in the field of view of Yutu 2's cameras in December. The far side of the moon is more rugged and has more craters than the moon's near side. Researchers with the China National Space Administration's Our Space program joked that it might be the hut of alien pioneers because the object appeared asymmetrical.
After a month of traversing the distance from the original spot where it snapped the "moon hut" image, the rover has sent back close-ups of the object. It turns out that the rock is not as big as it was thought to be. It is also a cuter. It looks like a crouched bunny is eating a couple of carrots. The bunny poop is seen in a couple of round pebbles near the rock's other end.
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"The Moon's surface is 38 million square kilometres of rocks, so it would have been exceptional for it to be anything else," space journalist Andrew Jones wrote on his account. The jade rabbit/ rock will be a monumental disappointment to some.
Many people were hoping for a large structure that looked more like the Arc de Triomphe or Beijing's towering CCTV headquarters building because of the lack of perspective in the original image.
Yutu 2 will continue its exploration of the Von Krmn crater after the bunny rock was cataloged. Since the soft landing on the far side of the moon in January, the rover has been exploring the region. The longest-lived rover is on the moon. It has explored the porous soil that makes up at least the top 130 feet of the moon's surface and investigated a strange-colored gel-like substance found in a crater. A 2020 study found that it was melted-together by a meteorite impact.
Live Science published the original article.
