Did China Find Man-Goo on the Moon?

Tuckerfan · Sep 2, 2019

Chinese scientists claim they've found a "gel-like" substance on the far side of the Moon.

China's Lunar Rover Has Found Something Weird on the Far Side of the Moon

China's Chang'e-4 lunar rover has discovered an unusually colored, 'gel-like' substance during its exploration activities on the far side of the moon.

The mission's rover, Yutu-2, stumbled on that surprise during lunar day 8. The discovery prompted scientists on the mission to postpone other driving plans for the rover, and instead focus its instruments on trying to figure out what the strange material is.

Day 8 started on July 25; Yutu-2 began navigating a path through an area littered with various small impact craters, with the help and planning of drivers at the Beijing Aerospace Control Center, according to a Yutu-2 'drive diary' published on Aug. 17 by the government-sanctioned Chinese-language publication Our Space, which focuses on space and science communication.

On July 28, the Chang'e-4 team was preparing to power Yutu-2 down for its usual midday 'nap' to protect the rover from high temperatures and radiation from the sun high in the sky. A team member checking images from the rover's main camera spotted a small crater that seemed to contain material with a color and luster unlike that of the surrounding lunar surface.

The drive team, excited by the discovery, called in their lunar scientists. Together, the teams decided to postpone Yutu-2's plans to continue west and instead ordered the rover to check out the strange material.

With the help of obstacle-avoidance cameras, Yutu-2 carefully approached the crater and then targeted the unusually colored material and its surroundings. The rover examined both areas with its Visible and Near-Infrared Spectrometer (VNIS), which detects light that is scattered or reflected off materials to reveal their makeup.

VNIS is the same instrument that detected tantalizing evidence of material originating from the lunar mantle in the regolith of Von Kármán crater, a discovery Chinese scientists announced in May.

So far, mission scientists haven't offered any indication as to the nature of the colored substance and have said only that it is "gel-like" and has an "unusual color." One possible explanation, outside researchers suggested, is that the substance is melt glass created from meteorites striking the surface of the moon.

Yutu-2's discovery isn't scientists' first lunar surprise, however. Apollo 17 astronaut and geologist Harrison Schmitt discovered orange-colored soil near the mission's Taurus-Littrow landing site in 1972, prompting excitement from both Schmitt and his moonwalk colleague, Gene Cernan. Lunar geologists eventually concluded that the orange soil was created during an explosive volcanic eruption 3.64 billion years ago.

Chang'e-4 launched in early December 2018, and made the first-ever soft landing on the far side of the moon on Jan. 3. The Yutu-2 rover had covered a total of 890 feet (271 meters) by the end of lunar day 8.

The Chang'e-4 lander and Yutu-2 rover powered down for the end of lunar day 8 on Aug. 7, and began their ninth lunar day over the weekend. The Yutu-2 rover woke up at 8:42 p.m. EDT on Aug. 23 (00:42 GMT Aug. 24), and the lander followed the next day, at 8:10 p.m. (00:10 GMT).

During lunar day 9, Yutu-2 will continue its journey west, take a precautionary six-day nap around local noontime, and power down for a ninth lunar night around Sept. 5, about 24 hours hours ahead of local sunset.
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Pics at the link, but I confess I can't see what they're talking about in any of them. The patch of orange soil that the Apollo 17 crew found is worth looking at if you've never seen a picture of it.

Minsc&Boo · Sep 8, 2019

Moon ginger dust in the wind?

Tuckerfan · Sep 21, 2019

China releases more pics of the strange man-goo they've found.

China's Lunar Rover Scopes Out Weird Substance on Far Side of the Moon (Photos)

China's Yutu-2 moon rover captured this image from the edge of the small crater where it found a mysterious, gel-like material.

China's lunar exploration program has released images that give us a glimpse of the mysterious material discovered on the far side of the moon.

Yutu-2, the lunar rover for China's Chang'e-4 mission, grabbed attention last month after its drive team spotted something unusual while roving close to a small crater. The Chinese-language science outreach publication Our Space, which announced the findings on Aug. 17, used the term "胶状物" (jiao zhuang wu), which can be translated as "gel-like." This notion sparked wide interest and speculation among lunar scientists.

Scientists have now gotten a look at that curious material, thanks to a post (Chinese) released over the weekend by Our Space via its WeChat social media account. Along with new images of the stuff on the moon, the post details how the Yutu-2 team carefully approached the crater in order to analyze the specimen, despite risks.

The clearest image shows two of the rover's six wheels and the contents of an approximately 7-foot-wide (2 meters) crater.

The compressed, black-and-white shot comes from an obstacle-avoidance camera on the rover. The green, rectangular area and red circle within are suspected to be related to the field of view of the Visible and Near-Infrared Spectrometer (VNIS) instrument, rather than the subject matter itself, according to some lunar scientists.

A cropped image showing the highlighted area with the crater.

VNIS is one of Yutu-2's four science payloads. It detects light that is scattered or reflected off materials to reveal their chemical makeup. As VNIS has a small field of view, the drive team needed to carefully navigate Yutu-2 to make a detection without falling into the crater.

After obtaining the first set of data that VIRS collected at the crater in July, the Yutu-2 team deemed it to be unsatisfactory due to shadows, so the team members attempted a second approach and measurement during the following lunar day in August. According to Our Space, a satisfactory detection was made — but the results were not released.

An image showing Yutu-2's shadow and tracks from when it approached the crater.

Clive Neal, a lunar scientist at the University of Notre Dame, told Space.com that while the image is not great, it may still give clues to the nature of the material.

Neal said that the material highlighted in the center of the crater resembles a sample of impact glass found during the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. Sample 70019 was collected by astronaut Harrison Schmitt, a trained geologist, from a fresh crater 10 feet (3 meters) in diameter, similar to that approached by Yutu-2.

Neal describes 70019 as being made of dark, coherent microbreccia — broken fragments of minerals cemented together — and black, shiny glass. "I think we have an example here of what Yutu-2 saw," Neal said.

High-speed impacts on the lunar surface melt and redistribute rock across the craters they make and can create glassy, igneous rocks and crystalline structures.

As for being unusual and "mysterious," as described by the initial Chinese account, "having craters looking like those from Yutu-2 and where 70019 was collected is to be expected," Neal said.

The initial observation that commanded the attention of the drive team was made from an image from Yutu-2's Panoramic Camera (PCAM). The Chang'e-3 mission's Yutu rover, which landed on the near side in 2013, returned impressive, high-resolution color images of the lunar landscape using its PCAM

The Yutu-2 team will have great images to work with, and these may suggest something different. However, images from the Chang'e-4 mission might be released publicly as long as one year after they have been taken.

Dan Moriarty, NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, agrees that it is hard to make a definitive assessment of the substance's chemical composition, given the poor image quality and overlying colored section in the Yutu-2 image.

Moriarty told Space.com that the outlined material appears somewhat brighter than surrounding materials, though the actual brightness is hard to confirm from the photographs. If so, the contrast could be due to the differing origins of the respective materials.

"Chang'e-4 landed in a mare basalt-filled crater, which is typically dark," Moriarty said. "Highlands crustal materials are typically brighter, so that would be a potential candidate."

"It will be very interesting to see what the spectrometer sees, and if any higher-resolution images become available," Moriarty notes.

Chang'e-3's Yutu rover carried an alpha particle X-ray spectrometer for analyzing chemical composition, mounted on a robotic arm, which would be very useful for identifying such specimens. Yutu-2 instead carries the new Advanced Small Analyzer for Neutrals (ASAN), a payload from Sweden for studying how solar winds interact with the lunar surface.

The Chang'e-4 lander and Yutu-2 completed the ninth lunar day of their mission on Sept. 5, powering down around 24 hours ahead of local sunset. Lunar day 10 will begin around Sept. 22 for Yutu-2 and Sept. 23 for the lander. (On the moon, a day lasts about two weeks.)

Yutu-2 has been heading west of the Chang'e-4 landing site in the Von Kármán crater since the historic Jan. 2 lunar far side landing, covering 934 feet (285 meters) so far.
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Diacanu · Sep 21, 2019

First pee-pee in our Coke, and now this.

Minsc&Boo · Sep 22, 2019

Diacanu likes jesus juice porn

steve2^4 · Sep 23, 2019

cheese.

oldfella1962 · Sep 24, 2019

I just thought about the thread title - I bet there are already a few Chinese restaurants that serve Mun Man Gu.
Half an hour later you'll want to hear this joke again BTW.

Minsc&Boo · Oct 1, 2019

oldfella jesus juice tape

We Are Borg vs. USS Crazy Horse · Oct 1, 2019

oldfella1962 said: ↑

I just thought about the thread title - I bet there are already a few Chinese restaurants that serve Mun Man Gu.
Half an hour later you'll want to hear this joke again BTW.
Click to expand...

Your internet privileges have been permanently revoked.

Tuckerfan · Jul 8, 2020

They think they know what it is.

Chinese scientists reveal analysis of weird substance found on the moon's far side by Yutu 2 rover

Chinese scientists have published an analysis of a curious substance on the moon which generated widespread interest following its discovery by the Yutu 2 rover last year.

The discovery was made by a Yutu 2 drive team member in July 2019, during lunar day 8 of the rover's mission, which is part of China's Chang'e 4 mission to explore the far side of the moon. A report by Our Space, a Chinese-language science-outreach publication, revealed the discovery on Aug. 17 and described the substance using the term "胶状物" ("jiao zhuang wu"), which can be translated as "gel-like."

This description, along with the initial absence of images, sparked wide interest as well as speculation among lunar scientists.

However the substance is, as expected by scientists, made up of rock. In their article in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Gou Sheng and colleagues analyzed data from Yutu 2's panoramic and hazard avoidance cameras, and the rover's Visible and Near-Infrared Spectrometer (VNIS) instrument.

They used a procedure called spectral unmixing to break down the measured spectra from VNIS to determine the likely composition and abundance of the material.

The authors describe the material as a dark greenish and glistening impact melt breccia, measuring 20 inches by 6 inches (52 by 16 centimeters). These features are signs of possible presence of glasses, which are usually sourced from impact melts or from volcanic eruptions.

According to the paper, the breccia — broken fragment of minerals cemented together — was formed by impact-generated welding, cementing and agglutinating of lunar regolith and breccia.

The material, they say, resembles lunar impact melt breccia samples returned by NASA's Apollo missions. In particular, similarities with the Apollo samples designated 15466 and 70019 are noted, a comparison made earlier by lunar scientist Clive Neal at the University of Notre Dame.

Sample 70019, collected by astronaut and trained geologist Harrison "Jack" Schmitt, is made of dark, broken fragments of minerals cemented together and black, shiny glass.

The results are not definitive, however. The paper notes that the analysis is limited by the fact that VNIS measurements were taken under bad illumination conditions and other factors.

Dan Moriarty, NASA postdoctoral program fellow at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said that because Chang'e 4 is exploring a completely unexplored area of the moon, spectral unmixing is especially challenging.

"We don't have samples from this region that would help inform the model parameters. For this reason, the precise regolith composition results presented in this paper may not be completely accurate," Moriarty said. "However, the authors do an excellent job of rigorously documenting their approach and assumptions, so their results can be understood in the context of this extremely challenging problem."

Moriarty said their interpretation of the substance seems reasonable, and is in agreement with previous interpretations based on earlier images. "It is very inspiring that contemporary missions are discovering features on the farside of the moon that resemble features observed by the Apollo astronauts," Moriarty said.

The paper also looks at the surrounding area. The measurements lead the authors to suggest the lunar regolith consists of a mixture from multiple sources. Ejecta from the impact that created the nearby Finsen crater is considered the primary source, with possible contributions from Alder crater.

The Chang'e 4 spacecraft made its historic landing in the 110-mile-wide (180 kilometers) Von Kármán Crater on the far side of the moon in January 2019.

Yutu 2 is currently getting ready for its 20th lunar day, which begins around July 14. (One lunar day is about two Earth weeks long, as is a lunar night.) During lunar day 19, which began on June 14, the rover had driven a total of 51 feet (15.58 meters) across the lunar surface. In total, the rover has traversed about 1,520 feet (463.26 m).

The rover spent its 19th lunar morning investigating a small crater containing reflective material which could be another impact melt glass sample before continuing northwest

Yutu 2 and the Chang'e 4 lander powered down on June 27 (Chinese), bringing an end to lunar day 19.
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Did China Find Man-Goo on the Moon?

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Did China Find Man-Goo on the Moon?

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