There is a pit on the moon. The credit is from NASA/GSFC and Arizona State University.
If you look closely, you can see a few nooks and crannies on the moon, from deep trenches to pits and even caves.
Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder are trying to understand what the environment might be like inside some of these shadowy features.
The pits and caves on the moon have remarkably stable conditions according to preliminary results. The wild swings in temperature that are common at the moon's surface don't seem to bother them, according to a graduate student in the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. He will present the group's findings at the American Geophysical Union fall meeting in New Orleans.
"If we're going to send people into these caves in the future, we want to know what to expect," said Wilcoski.
What is it like to go spelunking on the moon?
Future explorers may want to pay attention. The space colonies of the future could potentially be found in pits and caves. Humans might be protected from the sun's dangerous radiation by their walls and crevices. Some scientists wondered if lunar pits and caves could be rich in natural resources that astronauts want. Ice can be used to collect water for drinking, showers and even rocket fuel.
To find out if it was true, Paul Hayne and Wilcoski used computer simulations to recreate the conditions below the moon's surface.
Some of the moon's worst extremes could be helped by the stable environments of lunar pits and caves. The same conditions may make them less-than perfect places to look for water.
Hayne said that they are attractive options for establishing a long-term human presence on the moon.
There is a moon marked by poop.
No one knows how many pits and caves are on the moon. A scientific team went to search for them in the year 2014). Many of the holes looked like they were punched into the lunar surface, ranging from a half mile wide to the size of a London double-decker bus.
The moon is an extreme environment and scientists are excited about their potential.
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As the sun rose and set over the moon, the researchers created simulations to track the temperatures in lunar pits and caves. How these formations are oriented is what they found. If a cave's mouth points at the rising sun, it will get a lot warmer than if it points away.
The caves on the moon seemed to have relatively warm environments. Most of the simulations hosted temperatures of about minus 120 to minus 70 degrees Celsius ( minus 184 to minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit) on a lunar day.
Those are not good conditions for water to be frozen into ice. Water ice may have accumulated over billions of years in certain sites on the moon that researchers call "cold traps." According to the new simulations, many lunar pits and caves are too warm to hold similar treasure troves. You should go somewhere else to fill up your Nalgene.
One intriguing possibility is to establish a protected base station inside a lunar pit or cave near one of the polar craters. "Astronauts could venture out when conditions were right in order to collect ice-rich soil."
The lunar pits and caves were explored in a new study.
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