It looks like the Yutu lunar rover from China has stumbled upon a new kind of volcanic moon rock after making its landing on our planet’s satellite. This particular discovery would be the very first time across four decades of a new finding being confirmed to be present on the moon’s surface, now how about that to excite all of you lunar-philes out there? The rock samples were taken from Chang’e-3’s landing site that is located in the Imbrium basin.
The Imbrium basin happens to be a dark impact site that is full of hardened lava which can actually be viewed all the way from the earth, at least according to the folks over at the Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, as they happen to be one of the organizations that performed an analysis of the data which was beamed all the way back from the mission.
China’s Chang’e-3 lander was launched in 2013 to the moon’s surface, where it then performed a deployment of the Yutu rover. The Yutu rover has remained immobile for some time already, but it is not thoroughly “dead” so to speak, since it continues to send pings to Earth as recently as October this year. Sorry guys, it does not look as though there is vibranium or adamantium to exploit just yet.