Carpineti reported in May, 2019 that Chang’e-4, the first mission to land on the far side of the Moon, is helping researchers understand what the interior of our natural satellite is like. The lander touched down in the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin, one of the largest known impact craters in the Solar System. This location is crucial to the mission. The 2,500-kilometer (1,550-mile) crater is expected to contain material from the Moon’s interior. The ancient impact ripped the crust and brought to the surface rocks from the mantle. To study the compositions of these rocks, the lander deployed Yutu-2 (Jade Rabbit), a rover equipped with a visible and infrared spectrometer.
The lander and rover are situated in the Von Kármán crater within the SPA, which is moderately flat although there are some deeper impact craters around. The rover's first observations were made on the rocks in the flat region and they were quite peculiar. Researchers were expecting to find an abundance of the mineral olivine, the main component of the Earth’s upper mantle. Surprisingly, in the flat plains of the SPA, the mineral is not common at all.
"The absence of abundant olivine in the SPA interior remains a conundrum," Li Chunlai, a professor at the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC), said in a statement. "Could the predictions of an olivine-rich lunar mantle be incorrect?"
The first findings were only part of the picture. The team performed some spectral analysis of material from smaller and deeper impacts within the SPA and managed to find more olivine. Based on this, the researchers suggest that olivine and another mineral called pyroxene make up the mantle of the Moon in roughly equal composition. The findings are reported in Nature. "Understanding the composition of the lunar mantle is critical for testing whether a magma ocean ever existed, as postulated," explained Li. "It also helps advance our understanding of the thermal and magmatic evolution of the Moon."
The more olivine-rich rocks are believed to have come from the nearby Finsen impact crater, which is 72 kilometers (45 miles) in diameter and much deeper than the SPA. Yutu-2 will continue to study these rocks to fully understand their origin and abundance, and will even assess the possibility of collecting them and bringing them back to Earth in a future mission.
Then updating to 2021, Carpineti reports that China’s recent successes in space exploration from the Moon and Mars are very exciting but some of the slightly older missions are still going strong. Among them, there’s Yutu-2, the rover part of the Chang’e-4 mission, who has been busy exploring the far side of the Moon. The Chinese Space Agency gave a cute update about Yutu-2 as well as fellow rover Zhurong, which successfully landed on Mars last week. The two rovers and the relay system Magpie Bridge were talking in an anthropomorphized chat group about what they have been up to.
Yutu-2 has now completed its 30th lunar day. Each lunar day lasts for about 14 Earth days of Sun and 14 Earth days of night. The rover has been on the Moon for 866 days and has so far crossed 708.9 meters (2,326 ft) of lunar surface. The number suggests that it has not been zooming about much on this last day. The chat also suggests that Zhurong is doing fine on Mars and it has been sending data back to Earth as well as the first non-NASA pictures from the surface of Mars.
Yutu-2 continues its work of exploration. It has so far delivered new insights into the composition of the Moon as well as spotting peculiar rock formations such as the “milestone”.
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