A recent study found evidence of a long cave below the moon’s surface.
Caves could provide preserved areas of the moon for future exploration.
More than 270 pits on the moon have been identified so far.
Researchers used imaging from a camera on NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter managed by a team at Arizona State University.
Radar data of one of these pits found evidence of a cave just below the moon’s surface
“What we can use that to do is see where there are textural differences, and in the case of the cave paper here, we can see that there's empty space apart from where we see the hole in the ground. And so the thought is okay, that's proof that this is a more extensive open space,” said NASA LRO Project Scientist Noah Petro.
Petro said that caves could potentially provide the only preserved parts of the moon’s surface that haven’t been altered by asteroids.
"You have rock that formed 3.8 billion years ago and is likely not changed significantly by being exposed to space. It's a time capsule," Petro said.
The study was published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
