Lunar Caves

When we land up at Moon where shall we live?

Is it on the surface of the moon like earth?

Impossible because the temperature dynamics is so acute that on day it will be approximately 100⁰c and on night it would be around -150⁰c . Further, there is a possibility of micro-meteorites strikes and dust storms. Why these adversities are there at moon and not at earth? Because, the earth has atmosphere, which protects us from micro-meteorite strikes as well as drastic temperature changes.

So, we cannot live on the surface of the moon like earth. Then where could we live , the possible answers are started coming up recently. One such possibility is offered by Lunar Caves.

 (Image Courtesy : Appolo images archieve)

Lunar caves or lunar lava tubes are the tunnel like features run across many kilometers beneath moon surface. These caves would have been the result of the underground lava flow.  It is predicted that the temperature in these caves will range between 20 to -20 ⁰c. This is tolerable for human beings.

So our dream on living in moon is limited to living inside these tunnels. We can also expand the tunnel and create our own infrastructure inside these tunnels. However, we need to answer other questions like, how we are going to manage the gravity effect of moon which is approximately 1/6 of earth? And Water and Oxygen supply.

The lunar Sea!!!

We all know that 'there are two sides to every coin' ; how many of us knew that Moon has two sides?

We all have been told that there is no water in the moon. But how many of us know that the moon has sea?

 

Moon has sea!

But, this sea is without water.

Earth doesn't have sides because it rotates on its axis and revolves around the Sun.  Interestingly  the satellite moon also rotate on its axis but one rotation takes nearly as much time as one revolution around Earth. Thus we, the inhabitants of earth, will see only one side of the moon always. This side which is visible to our eyes(always) is known as 'Near side'. The other side which is invisible to us is known a 'Far side' (in the picture).

Image courtesy: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/news/lro-farside.html

When we see the moon with our naked eyes in a full moon day, we see bright white light.

When we look the moon deeply we could find patches of darkness and brightness. The brightness are from highlands and the darkness is from low lands. These low lands are otherwise known as ‘Mare’ (derived from the word ‘marine’) or lunar sea. The beauty of the lunar sea is that it is only present in the side which we always look into the near side. The far side doesn’t have lunar sea.