- Scientists now have the most compelling evidence yet of the existence of underground caves on the Moon.
- The large cave is Astronauts will work and live on the moon.
- Researchers hope to use radar technology to identify even more caves beneath the moon’s surface.
As efforts get underway to build a permanent lunar base where humans can live and work on the moon’s surface, scientists have discovered a potential game changer: a large-scale Underground cave.
For decades, scientists have The moon may be hidden Beneath that surface lies a cave, and now a new paper from an Italian team of researchers provides the most compelling evidence yet.
“In the Moon Cave Remains a mystery “Its existence remained unproven for over 50 years, so it was exciting to finally be able to prove its existence,” say Leonardo Carrere and Lorenzo Bruzzone of the University of Trento. Said The Associated Press.
The team speculates that, given how this cave formed, there could be hundreds more hidden beneath the surface of the Moon. Instead of building homes on the Moon, we could just live in existing caves. The cave below.
How a giant cave formed on the moon
Based on their data, the researchers estimate the cave is about 150 feet wide and up to 260 feet long, which is slightly smaller than an American football field with the end zone cut out.
of The cave is deep inside the holeThe hole, called the Mare Tranquility, is thought to have been formed by the collapse of a lava tube. Currently, there are no active volcanoes on the Moon, but billions of years ago, the surface of the Moon was covered with lava that flowed down valleys, carving lava tubes all over the surface of the Moon.
Over the millennia, some of these caves have become unstable and collapsed, creating holes, like the one the team examined in radar images taken by NASA’s lunar rover. It’s unclear exactly what the insides of the caves look like, but Lava TubeMaybe a place like Hawaii can give us some inspiration.
NASA’s LRO has discovered more than 200 holes on the moon’s surface, suggesting hundreds of possible underground caves that could provide future astronauts with protection from the harsh lunar environment, researchers reported Monday in a peer-reviewed journal. Natural Astronomy.
The pros and cons of living in a moon cave
“Thick cave ceiling rock would be ideal to protect people and infrastructure from the extreme changes in lunar surface temperature between day and night, and to block the high-energy radiation that illuminates the lunar surface,” said Catherine Joy, professor of geosciences at the University of Manchester, who was not involved in the research. Said Guardian.
The Moon has no atmosphere to regulate its climate, so its surface temperature changes rapidly. During the day, the Sun’s heat can raise the Moon’s surface temperature to about 250 degrees Fahrenheit, but at night it can drop to below -200 degrees Fahrenheit.
But in underground caves, the temperature remains constant and, according to past studies, is quite comfortable.
in 2022 Survey In the same region, the Mare Tranquility, another team of researchers used computer simulations to suggest that the temperatures in these lunar holes and areas of permanent shadow within adjacent caves remain at about 63°F.
Getting to these holes and caves is another story. The Mare Tranquility Cave lies more than 400 feet below the surface, near the bottom of a steep slope covered in loose debris.
Getting up and down that slope would require jetpacks to fly us over, or some kind of lunar elevator that could carry people up and down, or something else, some kind of technological ingenuity.
Moon Caves and Beyond
Radar technology could help scientists identify even more caverns or tubes extending from open holes in the moon’s surface. In the future, spacecraft equipped with higher-resolution radar could even map the interiors of all the holes LRO identifies, according to the Nature paper.
Such a “complete survey” would allow researchers to evaluate the best locations for further exploration and a future lunar base, the researchers wrote.
Lunar caves may also contain water, which would be a vital resource for a future lunar base.
Scientists have long known that the Moon harbors frozen water—just below the surface, in permanently shadowed craters, and even in lonely H2O molecules scattered on the sunlit lunar soil, which is less wet than the Sahara Desert.
Because the underground caverns are protected from the unforgiving vacuum of space and the sun’s radiation, water ice could exist, Bruzzone says. Said Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Access to lunar water is key to NASA’s plans to build a permanent lunar base and eventually send astronauts to Mars. Water isn’t just for drinking; hydrogen can also be split into basic components like rocket fuel and oxygen.
Bruzzone and his co-authors also noted that caves and lava tubes of different ages could act as a sort of fossil record of the moon’s history — and ultimately, studying them up close could help scientists better understand volcanic activity.
