Chinese astronauts may build a base inside a lunar lava tube
Caves were some of humanity's first shelters. Who knows what our distant ancestors were thinking as they sought refuge there, huddling and cooking meat over a fire, maybe drawing animals on the walls. Caves protected our ...
So there's a poetic parallel between early humans and us. We're visiting the moon again, and lunar caves could shelter us the way caves sheltered our ancestors on Earth.
On the moon, astronauts will need protection from a different set of hazards. They'll have to contend with cosmic and solar radiation, meteorites, wild temperature swings, and even impact ejecta. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has found hundreds of lunar "skylights," locations where a lava tube's ceiling has collapsed, making a natural opening into the tube. It's hard to tell without exploring, but lava tubes several hundred meters in diameter could exist on the moon. That's a lot of room to work with, and they could provide the shelter astronauts will need. The idea is to build a base inside a lunar lava tube, where astronauts gain additional protection from the thick rock ceiling overhead.
China is considering the idea now, just like others before them. Lunar lava caves might be a resource too valuable to ignore.
Lava tubes are also called pyroducts. They formed when lava flowing across the surface of the moon began to cool. The top of the flowing lava formed a hardened crust, but the molten lava kept flowing underneath it and eventually drained, leaving an empty tube. They're here on Earth as well.
Scientists aren't sure when lunar volcanism ended. It may have been as far back as one billion years ago, though some evidence shows there was small-scale volcanism in the last 50 million years. In either case, these lava tubes are ancient and untouched.
This is the entrance to a lava tube on Hawaii's Big Island. Credit: By dronepicr—Lava tube Big island Hawaii, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=75616740
Spectacular high sun view of the Mare Tranquillitatis pit crater revealing boulders on an otherwise smooth floor. The 100-meter pit may provide access to a lunar lava tube. Credit: By NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University—http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA13518, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=54853313
On the left is an LRO image of a pit in the center of Mare Fecunditatis, and on the right is a context map showing the pit with a yellow arrow. This is just one of the pits begging to be explored. Credit: NASA/LRO
This image shows a proposed 1,400 km traverse across the moon’s Mare Fecunditatis, a region rich in volcanic features, including lava tubes and the pit craters that could provide access. Credit: Zhao et al, 2022