It has been a long time since Japan's satellite Kaguya orbited the Moon — it crashed into the surface of the moon in June 2009. However the data it collected nearly a decade ago is still revealing incredible lunar secrets, and the Japanese space agency JAXA confirmed Wednesday the existence of an enormous cave in the moon. It’s the perfect place for a moon base.
Kaguya first spotted a giant vertical opening in the moon’s Marius Hills region back in 2009, but it’s only now that analysis of the radar data has revealed just how big this cave is. It’s more than 150 feet wide and deep and is more than 30 miles long. That’s a ton of space for a potential lunar base.
Scientists from Purdue University in the US and Japan's space agency – or JAXA – made clever use of radar data and information on the patterns of density across the Moon's surface to map out a suspect depression, establishing it as a candidate site for future Moon villages.
The big advantage of building a base inside such a cave is the natural protection that it would provide from cosmic radiation. The moon has next to no atmosphere, meaning any longtime inhabitants would be exposed to cosmic rays that we don’t have to worry about here on Earth, where we are naturally shielded.
While we certainly could come up with a way to protect ourselves — and we’re going to have to, if we want long-term habitation of worlds like the moon or Mars — the cave could do the job for us.
It's been a while since the Moon was geologically active, but its surface could still be riddled with such tubes and caves left over from its youth several billion years ago.
There are other advantages, according to JAXA. The cave interior would also shield astronauts from meteorite impacts — again, more of a concern on the moon than on Earth because of the lack of atmosphere — and it would also have a more stable temperature.
It’s thought that this cave and others like it are lava tubes, created by volcanic blasts some 3.5 billion years ago. The team’s full findings are presented in the latest issue of Geophysical Research Letters.
The longest an astronaut has spent on the Moon's surface is about three days. To make a lunar base at all viable for longer periods, residents would need protection to cope with an unfettered shower of accelerated plasma particles and high energy electromagnetic radiation.
KAGUYA taking Full Earth rise by HDTV Apr 5, 2008
A roof of rock would go a long way to stopping a significant percentage of those DNA-destroying rays.
It would also help provide access to geology that would otherwise require some digging to reach.
Types of Lava Tubes
Renewed interest in recent years encouraging private enterprises to find ways to set off into space has turned Moon shots into feasible goals, that might see us set foot on the lunar surface again in the next decade or so.
An actual Moon village could be on the horizon. Marius Hills might not be the most picturesque destination in space, but living in a Moon cave isn't so bad when you consider the hazards of the alternative.
Source: JAXA