According to a report on September 4th, the US media said that China's No. 4 detector found an unusual "gel-like" substance in the activity of detecting the back of the moon.
According to the US Space News Network reported on September 1, the Yutu No. 2 lunar rover accidentally discovered this "surprise." The discovery prompted scientists to postpone the other driving plans of the lunar rover and instead focus their research on figuring out what this strange substance is.
According to the “Driving Diary” of Yutu No. 2 published by the Chinese government’s “Our Space” aerospace media matrix on August 17, the help and planning of “pilots” at the Beijing Aerospace Flight Control Center on July 25th. Next, Yutu No. 2 began to walk through an area covered with small craters.
On July 28th, the No. 4 team was preparing to power off Yutu No. 2 for daily noon “snoring” to protect it from high temperature and solar radiation. A team member found a small crater when examining images taken by the Lunar Owner's camera, which seemed to contain something that was different in color and gloss from the surrounding lunar surface environment.
The report said that the team members who were excited about this discovery summoned their lunar scientists. They jointly decided to postpone the plan to continue driving westward on Yutu No. 2 and direct it to conduct a detailed study of this strange substance.
With the help of the obstacle-obscuring camera, Yutu No. 2 carefully approached the crater, and then used the unusual color and its surrounding environment as the target of observation. The lunar rover carefully examined the two areas using its "visible and near-infrared spectrometers."
So far, scientists who have performed this task have not provided any information on the nature of this colored substance, but simply call it "gel-like" and "unusual color." According to outside researchers, one possible explanation is that this substance is the molten glass produced when meteorites hit the surface of the moon.
According to the report, however, the discovery of Yutu No. 2 is not the first moon surprise that scientists have received. In 1972, Apollo 17 astronaut and geologist Harrison Schmidt discovered orange soil near the landing site of the Taurus-Litrow valley. Lunar geologists concluded that the orange soil was formed during a volcanic eruption of 3.64 billion years ago.