CURRENT AFFAIRS

Detailed explanation-1: -China hit a historic milestone on the moon Friday (Jan. 3) as its Chang’e 4 lander and rover celebrated their first full year exploring the lunar far side.

Detailed explanation-2: -China’s Yutu-2 rover has spotted two strange glass spheres on the far side of the moon. Glistening like translucent pearls against the moon’s dry and dusty landscape, the lunar “spherules"’ are the first of their kind to be found on the lunar surface and formed fairly recently, researchers say.

Detailed explanation-3: -China’s robotic Chang’e-4 spacecraft did something last year that had never been done before: It landed on the moon’s far side, and Yutu-2, a small rover it was carrying, began trundling through a crater there. One of the rover’s instruments, a ground-penetrating radar, is now revealing what lies beneath.

Detailed explanation-4: -Chang’e 4 (/tʃɑːŋˈə/; Chinese: ; pinyin: Cháng’é Sìhào; lit. ‘Chang’e No. 4’) is a robotic spacecraft mission, part of the second phase of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program. China achieved humanity’s first soft landing on the far side of the Moon, on 3 January 2019. Bottom: Yutu-2 rover on lunar surface.

Detailed explanation-5: -Humans couldn’t see the action, though-the rocket smashed into the moon’s far side in 350-mile-wide Hertzsprung crater, and lunar orbiters did not see the rocket come down. Astronomers believe the derelict rocket stage came from China’s Chang’e 5-T1 mission that launched in 2014, but experts are not completely certain.