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China has discovered semi-transparent glass balls on the surface of the moon, and they're thought to be the result of ancient asteroid impacts.
The glass balls were spotted by China's Yutu-2 lunar rover, which landed on the far side of the moon in January, 2019 as part of the Chang'e 4 mission.
The rover has since traveled more than 1,000 meters on the moon's surface, according to the country's Xinhua news agency, stirring up dirt and learning about the terrain and subsurface structure.
According to a study published online in the Science Bulletin journal in November last year by Chinese researchers, the Yutu-2 rover was exploring the South Pole-Aitken basin region of the moon when it came across "two translucent glass globules."
The team did not obtain any data that allowed them to work out what they were made of, but the location in which they were found suggests that the balls are most likely glass that resulted from a past asteroid impact.
The energy release from the impact would have been enough to turn nearby rock and soil into liquid, which eventually cooled to form the balls.
Researchers know that glass exists on the lunar surface. Indeed, the November study described it as "ubiquitous" in the moon's surface material—a result of "volcanism and hyper-velocity impacts".
Impact glass spheres tend to have rotational shapes and are characterized by smooth surfaces. Mostly they are less than a millimeter in size, though some are significantly larger with diameters of multiple centimeters and are deemed to be "macro-sized".
The balls discovered by Yutu-2 fall into this latter category, measuring 1.5 to 2.5 centimeters across, ScienceAlert reports.
The finding could provide promising objects for study that may help reveal the early impact history of the moon, according to Xinhua.
The balls are not the only recent finding by the Yutu-2 rover. Late last year, scientists operating the rover spotted a strange cube-shaped object in the distance using one of the rover's cameras.
Our Space, a Chinese social media channel associated with the China National Space Administration, described the object as a "mysterious hut" and an "obstrusive cube".
The finding sparked speculation online, but when the rover took a closer look the "cube" turned out to just be a rock—and not even a cube-shaped one.
In addition, back in 2019 Yutu-2 discovered what was described as a "gel-like" substance on the moon's surface. After further examination, it was determined that the substance is just rock that glistened and appeared gel-like in images.
