A craft orbiting the Moon has discovered an apparent 65-metre-wide opening into a deep lava tube, offering a possible site for a station from which to travel farther into space.
Junichi Haruyama of the Japanese Institute of Space and Astronautical Science in Sagamihara and his team estimated from shadows that the tube is 80–88 metres deep, enough to shield a space outpost from meteors.
The tube is in the Marius Hills region of a volcanic province on the near side of the Moon. The SELENE polar orbiter, which operated from September 2007 until June this year, photographed the tube with a terrain camera and a multi-beam imager.
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Moon matters: Lunar hideaway. Nature 462, 15 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/462015a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/462015a
