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Moon Cube Mystery: Chinese Rover Finds It’s Just a Rock
月球立方体之谜：中国探测器发现它只是一块石头
Last November, China’s Yutu-2 lunar rover spotted something curious on the far side of the moon. The image was blurry, but it was unmistakable: The object looked like a cube sitting on the moon’s surface. Its shape looked too precise to be just a moon rock — perhaps something left by visiting aliens like the monolith in Arthur C. Clarke’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
去年11月，中国的玉兔二号月球车在月球背面发现了一些奇怪的东西。图像很模糊，但它是明确无误的：这个物体看起来像一个立方体，坐落在月球表面。它的形状看起来太精确了，不可能只是一块月球岩石——可能是来访的外星人留下的东西，就像阿瑟·克拉克的《2001：太空漫游》中的大石碑一样。
China’s space authorities called it the “mystery hut”. Others called it the “moon cube”. Yutu-2 was sent for a closer look, and at the leisurely speed the rover is capable of traveling, it took weeks to get up close. On Friday, Our Space, a Chinese language science channel affiliated with China National Space Administration, posted an update. There is no monolith, no secret base on the rim of a lunar crater. Close up, it turns out to be just a rock. The seemingly perfect geometric shape was just a trick of angle, light and shadow.
中国的航天部门称它为 "神秘小屋"。其他人则称它为 "月球立方体"。“玉兔二号”被派去近距离观察，以探测器能够行驶的悠闲速度前行，它花了几周时间才靠近。周五，隶属于中国国家航天局的中文科学频道《我们的太空》发布了一条更新。月球陨石坑的边缘上没有巨石，也没有秘密基地。近看，原来只是块石头。看似完美的几何形状其实只是角度、光线和阴影的把戏。
Although the mystery hut was not a hut at all, one of the rover’s remote drivers on Earth pointed out that the rock sort of resembled a rabbit and one of the stones in front of it looked a bit like a carrot. That’s fitting as the rover’s name means “Jade Rabbit.” The rover has now driven just over 1,000 meters since it arrived three years ago on the moon’s far side, in Von Kármán crater, as part of the Chang’e-4 mission. It is the first mission to land on the far side.
尽管这个神秘的小屋根本就不是一个小屋，但地球上的勘探车遥控指挥指出，这块石头有点像一只兔子，它前面的一块石头看起来有点像胡萝卜。这很合适，因为漫游车的名字的意思是 "玉兔"。自从三年前作为嫦娥四号任务的一部分抵达月球远方的冯·卡门火山口以来，该车现在已经行驶了1000多米。这是第一次在月球背面着陆。
