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Yutu-2 continues its travels on Moon’s far side

The square boulder being targeted by Yutu-2

An update on the Chinese lunar rover Yutu-2 has revealed that its science team has now decided to head towards a square boulder that the rover had recently spotted on the nearby horizon.

The photo from Yutu-2 to the right shows that boulder. The original update was at this Chinese-language website.

The boulder is presently about 260 feet away, which at pace Yutu-2 travels, about 100 feet per lunar day, will take about two to three lunar days to get there.

Yutu-2 has been traversing the floor of 115-mile-wide Von Kármán crater since January, 2019, a total of 36 lunar days, each about 14 Earth days long. The rover goes into hibernation during the lunar night, is then awakened each lunar morning to operate for about two-thirds of that lunar day, during which it travels about 100 feet, and is then returned to hibernation with the setting of the sun.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

4 comments

  • Dave McCooey

    Monolith? 1x4x9

  • Chris

    New Starbucks – they’re everywhere! 4700++ on Mainland – One on the Moon!

  • Jeff Wright

    Borg Tactical Cube

  • Milt

    It is curious that the Chinese — hardly known for their openness and transparency — have identified this far side “anomaly” as a target for further investigation. Whether it is merely a boulder or not, they are at least acknowledging that it might be worth a closer look. (Actually, even if it is “only” a boulder thrown up by an impact, this in itself makes it a pretty good target.)

    In contrast, our Never A Straight Answer agency would probably have airbrushed out the “boulder” and/or this frame would mysteriously go missing from their archives. Likewise, they would have turned Yutu-2 around as quickly as possible and headed at flank speed away from it. “Nothing to see here folks, move along!”

    Think that I am kidding? See
    https://www.sciences-faits-histoires.com/medias/files/image-analysis-of-unusual-structures-on-the-far-side-of-the-moon-in-the-crater-paracelsus-c.pdf
    To this day, “official” NASA refuses to acknowledge that there is anything worth “looking at” here. It doesn’t fit their narrative / timetable of discovery, thus it can’t exist.

    Again, the irony here is that while NASA seems programmed to “avoid” acknowledging / investigating lunar anomalies that don’t fit into its scripted narrative of expected discoveries* the Chinese, in this case, seem to be practicing old fashioned science. If something “odd” turns up, don’t run from it (or pretend it’s not there) — INVESTIGATE it.

    *For more years than I can remember, the official NASA narrative was that the moon was a totally “dead” world on which nothing
    interesting — let alone mysterious — ever happened, even excluding, at one time, the possibility of observing meteor impacts there. (This official line was reinforced over the years in sundry articles in Sky & Telescope. Indeed, people like William H. Pickering and VA Firsoff were cast as the Donald Trumps of astronomy, wrecking the established order and annoying respectable people.) Happily, even NASA now admits (mostly) that the moon is a pretty interesting place and that we ought to be excited about going back there.

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