Chandrayaan-1 Spots Giant Underground Chamber On the Moon

siliconeyes writes "Scientists at the Indian Space Research Organization have discovered a giant underground chamber on the moon, which they feel could be used as a base by astronauts on future manned missions to moon. An analysis by an instrument on Chandrayaan-1 revealed a 1.7-km long and 120-metre wide cave near the moon's equator that is in the Oceanus Procellarum area of the moon that could be a suitable 'base station' for future human missions."

Comments

Re:to echo a commenter on TFA....

[Brett Buck]

There are certainly dust storms of a sort. Dust is moved by electrostatic forces as the sun rises and sets - all those charged particles coming out of the Sun, unimpeded, is like rubbing an amber rod with cat fur.

Lava Tube

[icebike]

A far better link is this one: http://www.moonsociety.org/reports/ISRO_Lavatube_Discovery.html

You can't tell the length of a chamber from a photograph of the surface. Its not at all clear that there is any enclosed space in this tube. It could have been that the un-collapsed section is in fact filled full of derbies. Until we can hit them with ground penetrating radar its probably guesswork.

Re:dust-free? really?

[quarterbuck]

The original paper is published in an open access journal and the authors have covered the issues you mention.
Their citations 2-8 are other papers which discuss the possibility of using caves like this for human habitation. The paper also includes spectroscopic studies of the composition of the roof -- seems like lots of Iron and Titanium.This seems to indicate Basalts (volcanic) according to the paper.If it withstood a lava flow, presumably it will survive an atmospheric re-pressurisation/ bunch of construction crews drilling away.