Comments on: A lava tube entrance near the Moon’s north pole? https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/a-lava-tube-entrance-near-the-moons-north-pole/ Sun, 14 Jan 2018 06:36:27 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 By: wodun https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/a-lava-tube-entrance-near-the-moons-north-pole/#comment-1036429 Sun, 14 Jan 2018 06:36:27 +0000 http://behindtheblack.com/?p=49737#comment-1036429 It is tough to tell what might be there and what is just shadows. While Tom Billings has a very rational and knowledgeable suggestion above, it would also be nice to be able to just send some people over to check things out. One day!

]]> By: Tom Billings https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/a-lava-tube-entrance-near-the-moons-north-pole/#comment-1036013 Fri, 12 Jan 2018 17:22:39 +0000 http://behindtheblack.com/?p=49737#comment-1036013 This is outstanding news! The closer to the poles, the better the chance of an ice cave. What is now needed is an orbiting ground-penetrating radar, to detect and characterize the size of lava tubes on the Moon, in lunar polar orbit. A multi-bandwidth radar might do better at distinguishing ice inside a cave, given the lower electrical contrast between ice and rock than between water and rock.

When I talked with Dr. Brown ( who ran the Apollo Lunar Sounder experiment on Apollo 17) about such an orbiter in 1990 he said it would cost a billion dollars for such a mission. Today, that is no longer the case, and the price is dropping. The Sood, Melosh, Howell proposal of a year ago (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/298529224) is the latest I’ve seen for such a probe of the Moon.

In spite of the recent political interest in lunar work, I would far rather see such a mission done privately, to avoid the academic/political complications of NASA’s projects. That is not yet probable, but is becoming increasingly possible as new companies announce their focus on lunar development yearly.

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