Humans living on the Moon? We have not yet reached this point, but everything will work out and it has been discovered that caves and lunar pits could have pleasant temperatures for humans, both during the day and at night. They would be around 17 degrees Celsius .
That there are pits on the Moon has been known for a few years. However, the extreme conditions that occur on our satellite, with temperatures ranging from 127 degrees Celsius during the day, to approximately negative 173 at night, did not raise the possibility that humans could live there for a season.
Now, a group of scientists claims that our satellite could host protected pits and caves where the temperature would be more than reasonable regardless of whether it is day or night. The temperature in these places would be around 17 degrees Celsius, according to the researchers’ calculations. They would be perfect places to establish base camps to explore the rest of the lunar surface. They would also offer some protection against small meteorites and even radiation from the Sun. With a comfortable home base, future colonists on the Moon could spend their time on tasks such as growing food or research.
“Humans evolved living in caves, and to caves we might return when we live on the Moon,” says planetary scientist David Paige of the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).
To conduct their study, the researchers used images captured by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), more specifically from its Diviner Lunar Radiometer Experiment thermal camera. The goal was to measure the temperature inside a pit in the Mare Tranquillitatis region of the Moon. They also used computer models to find out what the thermal properties of the rock have been like over time.
The researchers calculated that the part of the trench illuminated by the Sun could retain heat reaching up to 300 degrees Celsius, a temperature higher than the surface. However, in close shadows, the trapped heat would serve to raise otherwise frigid temperatures. The result would be a slightly warmer temperature that would be maintained even when the Sun went down.
The next puzzle that arose was whether the pits and caves would be large enough to house a community of explorers. Taking into account the images taken from space, everything indicates that some of them would have the appropriate space . In fact, it is something that also happens on Earth, in the tunnels created by the molten lava that flows under the surface. Scientists believe that some of the lunar pits are precisely collapsed lava tubes.
Part of the investigation involved aligning and collating multiple photographs, weeding out inconsistencies until the team could estimate the temperatures of individual pixels in the LRO images. “Because no one had ever looked at things that small with the Diviner, we found that it had a little bit of double vision, which made all of our maps a little blurry,” says planetary scientist Tyler Horvath, also of UCLA.
A day on the Moon lasts about 15 days on Earth. The same happens with the night. If during the day the temperature would be around 127 degrees Celsius, at night it would reach 173 degrees below zero. For this reason, both people going to the Moon and their equipment would need to protect themselves from these extremes for the duration of lunar research. This would be quite an engineering challenge. Having one or two habitable caves would make the task much easier.
NASA plans to further explore the region during the Moon Diver mission . In it, a rover would go deep inside the Mare Tranquillitatis pit and check any cave networks it might be connected to.
“Moon trenches are a fascinating feature of the lunar surface,” says planetary geologist Noah Petro of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. “Knowing that they create a stable thermal environment helps us paint a picture of these unique lunar features and the prospect of someday exploring them.”
Referencia: Horvath, T., Hayne, P., Paige, D. 2022. Thermal and Illumination Environments of Lunar Pits and Caves: Models and Observations From the Diviner Lunar Radiometer Experiment. Geophysical Research Letters. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1029/2022GL099710
