Mare Pits On The Moon Could Shelter Astronauts
Friday, July 18, 2014 - 00:30
in Astronomy & Space
The moon's surface has by millions of craters but it also has over 200 holes – and those steep-walled pits that in some cases might lead to caves that future astronauts could explore and use for shelter, according to new observations from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft. The pits range in size from about 5 yards across to around 1,000 in diameter, and three of them were first identified using images from the Japanese Kaguya spacecraft. Hundreds more were found using a new computer algorithm that automatically scanned thousands of high-resolution images of the lunar surface from LRO's Narrow Angle Camera (NAC). read more