BBC reports on the discovery of a cave on the moon that has awakened a primordial proto-human urge in the space scientists observing it. They spot a cave on the moon and think, hey, we could live in that thing:
Helen Sharman, the first British astronaut to travel to space, told BBC News that the newly-discovered cave looked like a good place for a base, and suggested humans could potentially be living in lunar pits in 20-30 years.
But, she said, this cave is so deep that astronauts might need to abseil in and use “jet packs or a lift” to get out.
Lorenzo Bruzzone and Leonardo Carrer at the University of Trento in Italy found the cave by using radar to penetrate the opening of a pit on a rocky plain called the Mare Tranquillitatis.
It is visible to the naked eye from Earth, and is also where Apollo 11 landed in 1969.
The cave has a skylight on the Moon’s surface, leading down to vertical and overhanging walls, and a sloping floor that might extend further underground.
It was made millions or billions of years ago when lava flowed on the Moon, creating a tunnel through the rock.
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Once Prof Bruzzone and Prof Carrer understood how big the cave was, they realised it could be a good spot for a lunar base.
“After all, life on Earth began in caves, so it makes sense that humans could live inside them on the Moon,” says Prof Carrer.
The cave has yet to be fully explored, but the researchers hope that ground-penetrating radar, cameras or even robots could be used to map it.
Scientists first realised there were probably caves on the Moon around 50 years ago. Then in 2010 a camera on a mission called the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter took pictures of pits that scientists thought could be cave entrances.
But researchers did not know how deep the caves might be, or if they would have collapsed.