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That Strange Gel-Like Material Discovered by China's Lunar Rover? It's Just Rock - Universe Today
Jul 09, 2020 1 min, 23 secs
The Yutu-2 rover got busy exploring its surroundings.

Among the mission’s findings was a strange material described as “gel-like.” Now an analysis of the material has revealed that it’s just rock: impact melt breccia.

The Yutu-2 rover was moving across the floor of the Von Karman crater, which is inside the vast South-Pole-Aitken basin.

Inside a much smaller crater, it spotted a glistening, green material.

The title of the paper is “Impact melt breccia and surrounding regolith measured by Chang’e-4 rover.” The lead author is Sheng Gou, from the Laboratory of Remote Sensing Science, Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

But they still say that the “gel-like” substance is in fact simple impact melt breccia.

After analyzing the rock, and the surrounding areas, the researchers think they have a best-fit explanation for the rock itself.

The “gel-like” rock is inside a small crater, which is inside a large crater, which is inside an enormous crater.

The enormous crater is the South-Pole Aitken basin, which would have created an enormous melt pool at the time of impact.

The sample location is right on the edge of the melt pool.

According to the researchers, the rock is likely a mixture “from a differentiated melt pool or from a suite of igneous rocks,” resulting from nearby crater impacts.

They say the rock “was formed by impact-generated welding, cementing and agglutinating of lunar regolith and breccia.”.

When the Yutu-2 rover found the strange rock, scientists were puzzled.

Now, it’s almost a let-down to discover that the “gel-like” substance is just rock.

Even if it is a complex rock, created from the heat of an impact.

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