While the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the European Space Agency (ESA) have been exploring Mars and comets, China’s Yutu Mission is discovering interesting things about the moon. While, China is new in the space exploration arena, its efforts should not be discounted. The Chinese space agency has been approaching the space with a few resources than other agencies.

China isn’t exploring Mars, Saturn’s moon, but earth’s only natural satellite, Moon. It is the space agency’s first mission to the natural satellite located at a distance of about 384,400 kilometers. The Chinese space agency has fewer resources, but it is making the most of it. China’s Yutu moon rover had touched the moon’s surface in December 2013. Since then, the rover has done several deep investigations to discover something new on the moon.

Now, the rover found that the moon has about nine different layers of rock. According to reports, the new discovery could lead scientists in believing that the moon was geologically active about 3.3 billion years ago. While talking about the new discovery, Long Xiao, a researcher from the China University of Geosciences and lead author of the discovery, said that the mission has provided two significant factors about the moon.

According to Xiao, the first interesting thing is that more volcanic events have been defined in the late volcanism history of the moon. “Another is the lunar mare volcanic plain area is not only composed of basaltic lavas, but also explosive eruption-formed pyroclastic rocks. The latter finding may shed light on … the volatile contents in the lunar mantle”, Xiao added.

The new discovery by the Yutu moon rover has been published on Thursday in the journal Science. In the report, the authors have provided the results of the rover’s camera and radar instrument, a tool which can probe 1,300 feet below the surface.