You’re sipping on a cup of steaming coffee
in mission control of the China National Space Administration. The room is covered from wall to wall with
glowing screens and monitors. You lean back in your chair and gaze through
the wisps of haze rising from your mug. All is quiet as you are about to shut down
the Yutu-2 rover for its daily recharge. Suddenly a scientist burst through the doors. His hair is disheveled. His eyes are as large as full moons. “You won’t believe this!” he pants. “We found something.” You stand up and rush over to the scientist. You eagerly urge him to go on, but he has
to catch his breath. The scientist finally stands up and sputters,
“We found something strange on the dark side of the moon.” You take a step back and ask him to repeat
himself. The scientist says, “I was going through
the videos from Yutu-2 and it picked up something strange, something that we can’t explain.” A million thoughts race through your head. What could the mysterious object be? You need more information, but you can’t
help the feeling of butterflies in your stomach as you think, could we have found life? Aliens? A crashed UFO? “What is it?” you ask as you shake the
scientist. “We just don’t know. It looks to be a gel-like substance. It is in one of the craters the rover was
exploring. There shouldn’t be any gel on the moon! There is no atmosphere and it is freezing
cold,” he responds. A gel-like substance, you think. How could there possibly be a gel-like substance
on the moon. You run over to the red telephone on your
desk and pick it up. There are no buttons to push. Once the phone is removed from the cradle
it automatically calls the head of the China National Space Administration. The line picks up and you speak into the receiver. “Sir, we found something, I think you should
bring everyone in. This could be big.” As you wait for your boss and the rest of
the team to come in you think back to December 7, 2018 when the China National Space Administration
launched Chang’e-4. The main goal of this mission was to land
on the dark side of the moon and collect data. On January 3, 2019 China became the first
country to successfully land a spacecraft on the far side of the moon. You smile as you recall that this was no small
feat. Several other countries had tried and failed
to do what your team accomplished. Landing on the dark side of the moon is difficult
because of the inability to maintain constant communication with a spacecraft. The monstrous sphere that is the moon blocks
the signals between Earth and any vessel on the other side. To get around this problem, you and your team
placed a satellite between the moon and Earth. This satellite is at an angle which allows
you to maintain communication with Chang’e-4 at all times. Once the spacecraft successfully touched down,
the Yutu-2 rover drove off the lowered landing platform and cruised across the ancient moon
dust. Yutu-2 is the only rover that has ever explored
the dark side of the moon. It is an exciting time for all astronomers
and astrogeologists. Yutu-2 will collect data that may uncover
the mysteries of the moon's early history. You are brought out of your reminiscing when
the entire team that is working on the Chang’e-4 lunar project floods into mission control. The head of the China National Space Administration
walks over to your terminal and says, “show me what you have found.” You replay the video from Yutu-2 showing the
rover pulling up to the odd gel-like substance. It seems to shimmer like diamonds. It is day nine of the mission and you’ve
been up for 24 hours straight, trying to unravel the mystery of what the Yutu-2 rover has uncovered. After the scientist brought the strange object
to your attention, you postpone all other driving plans for the foreseeable future. Or at least until you can figure out what
the heck it is you’re looking at. The video footage is delayed by a couple seconds
from the vast distance the signal has to travel. You have to program the rover to return to
the position where it came across the gel-like substance. With the help of obstacle avoidance cameras
you maneuver the Yutu-2 rover back towards the edge of the crater where the mysterious
substance is located. You target the spot where the substance rests. The rover slowly pulls up and comes to a stop. You focus the camera on the gel-like substance. Everyone is holding their breath in anticipation. You cycle through the different settings and
tools of the Yutu-2 camera. You examine the substance in the visible light
spectrum and then in the near-infrared spectrum. This detects light that scatters and reflects
off of the strange material. The collected information will help identify
the chemical makeup of the discovery. The data is surprising. You scratch your head as your team tries to
identify the substance and understand how it ended up on the moon. One thing that stands out, is that the mysterious
substance has a unique color. It shimmers like melted glass and has a metallic
sheen to it. The object resembles volcanic rocks like obsidian
on planet Earth. The moon does not have any active volcanoes
and it’s core has been dead for millennia. Therefore, it would seem that the substance
was not created by cooling magma or other volcanic activity. So what is it then? What could create such a unique substance
on the far side of the moon? You and your team of scientists come to the
conclusion that at some point a meteor flying hundreds of thousands of miles per hour slammed
into the moon's surface. The moon does not have an atmosphere like
Earth, so there is nothing to slow the impact of a meteor. There is no protective shield that causes
space rocks to burn up on entry and create shooting stars like we see on our planet. The meteor rockets towards the lunar surface. Without anything to slow it down the crust
of the moon takes the full impact of the space rock. This releases an enormous amount of energy. It is analogous to a nuclear bomb detonating. On Earth, when nuclear weapons are tested,
the rocks and sand in the area become superheated and create a glassy mineral called trinitite. The same process happens when meteors impact
the moon’s surface at high velocities. You and your team conclude that this must
be what happened on the far side of the moon to create the unknown substance. The landscape is pocked with meteor impact
craters. The lunar surface has been battered for billions
of years by the unrelenting rocks hurtling through space. It is too early to say with one hundred percent
accuracy, but the gel-like substance you found is most likely not gel at all. Instead it is probably similar to the rock
formation that astronauts brought back to Earth during the Apollo 17 mission. After that mission, scientists who analyzed
the glassy rocks from the near side of the moon concluded that their chemical makeup
was consistent with a meteor strike. High velocity meteor impacts release huge
amounts of pressure and heat on minerals they slam into. This compression and superheating causes the
chemical structures of regular rocks to shatter. Then as they cool the molten minerals reform
into a structure that looks like shiny glass and bends light in surprising ways. Something that you and your team note is that
this rare mineral may be abundant on the moon. Who knows what new technology and inventions
could come from your discovery. You know that the properties of the mystery
substance must be studied further. You have made an incredible discovery just
eight days into your mission for the China National Space Administration. But it is time to carry on. The moon holds many unexplained mysteries
and opportunities for research. One of the most surprising discoveries you
want to investigate further came from Apollo 17 when astronaut and geologist Harrison Schmitt
discovered orange-colored soil near the spacecraft’s landing site. It would seem that the moon has a knack for
creating rocks and soil of interesting colors. This discovery was baffling at the time. Scientists concluded that the orange mystery
soil was created during a volcanic eruption 3.64 billion years ago. Although the moon has not been volcanically
active for billions of years, in the distant past, the surface of the moon was covered
with volcanoes. The time during the moon’s formation was
full of intense seismic activity. It’s core was still molten and magma spewed
out of numerous volcanoes across the lunar surface. You are hoping to gather more data on the
moon’s early volcanic activity during your mission. A different mystery your team may help solve
was announced recently by NASA. This mystery has to do with the side of the
moon where the Yutu-2 rover is located. NASA recently found a massive blob of unknown
makeup underneath the surface of the far side of the moon. This mystery blob has a mass relative to five
piles of metal the size of the Big Island of Hawaii. The blob sits at least 180 miles beneath the
South Pole-Aitken basin. The South Pole-Aitken basin is a colossal
crater that was created billions of years ago. It was most likely formed when the moon's
molten surface was beginning to cool. Before the surface could harden, an asteroid
slammed into the crust creating an enormous indented crater. But what lies below the surface? What is the huge blob? Maybe you and your team at the China National
Space Administration can find out, since you are the only ones who have a rover on the
far side of the moon. You and your team have already accomplished
an astonishing amount in the short time the Chang’e-4 mission has been active. You use reflected radiation to analyze the
minerals and composition of the moon’s surface where the rover landed. This analysis of the landing sight reveals
two mineral types that are not a match of any of the known minerals in the moon’s
crust. Maybe these minerals came from the much sought
after lunar mantle. Scientists have been working for years to
identify the makeup of the moon’s mantle to understand its formation and inner layers
better. If you and your team can understand the moon’s
evolution, you could uncover the mysteries of the moon’s magnetism. Did the moon have a magnetic field similar
to ours in the past? How strong was the magnetic field? Which way was north? All of these questions could be answered by
you and your team. The Chang'e-4 mission also has relayed information
about the lunar dust layer. The moon’s dust is called regolith and your
team has discovered that it is thicker than previously thought. The spacecraft your team sent to the far side
of the moon has measured the regolith at 39 feet deep. In the past the dust has caused problems to
manned missions through clogging vents and reducing visibility. The dust itself came from pulverized rocks
that settled on the lunar surface after billions of years of asteroid bombardment. You and your team have confirmed that this
dust exists on the far side of the moon, and any future missions need to take into account
the dangers it poses. Your team along with other scientists and
astronauts have dreamed of creating a lunar base. A place where astronauts and researchers can
go to conduct experiments. It could also be a port or building facility
for spacecraft that will venture further into the solar system. A moon base could serve as the first stop
on manned missions to Mars, Venus, or beyond. You think about how the data collected by
Chang'e-4 could be used to make the moon base a reality. You envision sending more rovers to clear
the dust where the habitat could be built. Mining and drilling robots can be sent to
harvest moon rocks and resources to construct the moon base. Perhaps the discovery Yutu-2 made of the mysterious
substance will end up being used in future technologies. Your analysis of the minerals on the surface
of the dark side of the moon may reveal that it is an ideal location to set up a refueling
station. Or maybe later in your mission you find that
there is ice or water laying just below the surface of the moon. The most precious resource in all the galaxy. All of these dreams may be possible one day
because of the success of the Chang'e-4 mission. The mysterious substance you found still needs
further analysis, but it may contain materials that could further space exploration. The data that the China National Space Administration
is still collecting from its mission to the far side of the moon may unlock the mysteries
of the largest and brightest object in our night sky. Now check out our video What Are Some Mysterious
Objects in Space We Can't Explain Yet? Or maybe visiting another planet is more up
your alley, in which case go watch Most Extreme Planets In The Galaxy.
