International collaborative research teams such as the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and Tokai University have analyzed the data obtained by the Japanese lunar orbiting satellite "Kaguya" and have a depth of several tens to several hundreds of meters below the lunar volcanic area. Discovered multiple cavities in.One of them is a huge underground cavity extending several tens of kilometers from east to west, which is suitable for future scientific exploration and lunar base construction.
It was once thought that there was a cavity (lava tube) formed underground when lava flowed on the moon.However, no evidence was found in the last century to suggest the existence of an underground cavity.
In 2009, based on the image data of the terrain camera mounted on "Kaguya", a vertical hole with a diameter and depth of 50m, which is different from a normal crater, was discovered in a place called "Marius Hills".Furthermore, observations by US satellite cameras confirmed the existence of a space of several tens of meters or more at the bottom of the vertical hole.
The "Kaguya" was equipped with a lunar radar sounder, which made it possible to investigate the underground structure of the moon.Observe by transmitting radio waves with a wavelength of 60 m from a dipole antenna and receiving reflected waves from underground.As a result of analyzing the received reflected wave data in this study, it was suggested that there is an uncollapsed underground cavity extending about 50 km to the west with the vertical hole as the eastern end.
In addition, the location of the underground cavity, which was determined by the reflected wave data, is consistent with the data from the gravitational field observation of the American probe Grail, which ensures that there is an uncollapsed underground cavity in this area. It is said that it became.
In the future, it plans to proceed with the detection of the lunar underground cavity by comparing and analyzing various data, and to obtain useful information for future underground cavity exploration and lunar base construction.
Paper information:[Geophysical Research Letters] Detection of intact lava tubes at Marius Hills on the Moon by SELENE (Kaguya) Lunar Radar Sounder
