China's Yutu 2 rover has spotted what Chinese researchers have called a "mystery house" on the moon.
Yutu 2 recorded a blurry image of the cube-shaped object as the rover crossed the Von Kármán crater on the moon.
The rover spotted the "mystery house" at about 260 feet (80 meters), the China National Space Administration's Our Space outreach program posted on Chinese social network Weixin on December 3.
Our Space researchers say the strange irregularities in the landscape stand out above the uniform, unremarkable horizon, and that there is a small crater next to it.
"'Is that the house the aliens built after the emergency landing?' Our space researchers joke. 'Or were spacecraft pioneers of the predecessors to explore the moon?'" Our Space researchers were quoted as saying by Live Science.
But those expecting a space encounter with one of the mysterious alien monoliths from Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" will be disappointed.
The most likely explanation is a bit tedious: The mysterious object may have been one of the many boulders of the moon, which may have been lifted from beneath the lunar surface by an impact event.
However, scientists won't know for sure, until explorers cross the gap and take a closer look, which they estimate will take two to three months.
This may sound like a snail's pace, but the journey will take Yutu 2 across rocky terrain and through two to three days and nights on the moon forcing the rover to close both when the sun is directly overhead, to avoid overheating, and when there is no light, to prevent it from running out of power.
The rover was launched from China's Chang'e 4 lunar lander after successfully completing its first soft landing on the far side of the moon, in January 2019. Running across the 115-mile (186-kilometer) Von Kármán crater, the rover has been carefully exploring the far side of the moon for 37 days. lunar.
During that time, the rover has carried out detailed scans beneath the moon's surface and even spotted a mysterious "gel-like" substance, which scientists say is lunar rock melted into glass by the energy of the asteroid impact.
Chang'e 4 is China's fourth mission to the moon and the second to land a rover on the lunar surface.
China also landed the Zhurong rover on Mars this year and is currently building the Tiangong space station, which is planned for completion by the end of 2022.
China has also stated that it will set up a lunar research station at the lunar south pole by 2029
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