Nasa finds pits with comfortable ‘sweater weather’ on Moon where people can ‘live and work’

Nasa scientists have discovered shaded locations within pits on the Moon which they say always hovers around a comfortable “sweater weather” of about 17°C (63°F).

The pits, and caves to which they may lead, make for safer stable base camps, and potential locations for long-term habitation of the lunar surface where astronauts in future missions may “work and live,” researchers, including those from the University of California - Los Angeles (UCLA) in the US, say.

Since Nasa began exploring the Moon, inventing heating and cooling equipment to operate under harsh lunar conditions and producing enough energy to power it nonstop has been an insurmountable barrier, scientists say.

They believe these locations on the Moon can provide better long-term habitation than the rest of the surface, which heats up to 260°F (126°C) during the day and drops to 280°F below zero (-173°C) at night.

These pits were first discovered on the lunar surface in 2009, and scientists have wondered if they led to caves that could be explored or used as shelters.

Studies have found that about 16 of the more than 200 pits discovered on the Moon are likely collapsed lava tubes.

Such tubes, also found on Earth, form when molten lava flows beneath a field of cooled lava or a crust forms over a river of lava, leaving a long, hollow tunnel.

If the ceiling of one such solidified lava tube collapses, researchers say it can open a pit that leads into the rest of the cave-like tube.

In the new study recently published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, scientists assessed images from Nasa’s robotic Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to find out if the temperature within the pits diverged from those on the surface.

They used computer modeling to analyse the thermal properties of the rock and lunar dust on a roughly cylindrical 100-meter-deep depression – about the length and width of a football field – in an area of the moon known as the Mare Tranquillitatis.

Scientists also charted the pit’s temperatures over a period of time.

They found that temperatures within the permanently shadowed reaches of the pit fluctuate only slightly throughout the lunar day, remaining at around 63°F.

If a cave extends from the bottom of this pit – as suggested by images taken by the LRO – it too would have this relatively comfortable temperature, the study noted.

“Because the Tranquillitatis pit is the closest to the lunar equator, the illuminated floor at noon is probably the hottest place on the entire moon,” study co-author Tyler Horvath from UCLA said.

Building lunar bases in the shadowed parts of these pits can allow scientists to focus on challenges such as growing food, providing oxygen for astronauts, gathering resources for experiments, and expanding the base, they say.

Pits or caves may also offer protection from cosmic rays, solar radiation, and small-sized meteorites.

“Although we cannot be completely certain of a cave’s existence through remote observations, such features would open the door for future exploration and habitation on the Moon: they could provide shelter from dramatic temperature variations present elsewhere on the lunar surface,” researchers wrote.

“Humans evolved living in caves, and to caves we might return when we live on the moon,” David Paige, another author of the study, said.