Scientists for the first time discovered on the Moon cave, which theoretically could be an ideal place to set up a habitable base on the Earth's satellite, writes UNN with reference to the BBC.
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The cave, found by Italian scientists using radar, is at least 100 meters deep. However, researchers suggest that it is only one of hundreds of similar caves that hide in the "still unexplored underworld" of the Moon.
Scientists Lorenzo Bruzzone and Leonard Carrer of the University of Trento in Italy discovered the cave while studying images of a well-known lunar region called the Sea of Tranquility.
This lunar sea can be seen from Earth with the naked eye, and it was there that the American astronauts of the Apollo 11 mission made their first-ever landing in 1969.
The entrance to the cave is on the lunar surface, and below it are vertical walls and a sloping interior.
Scientists speculate that the cave was created millions or even billions of years ago, when the moon was moving hot lava - it was it that could make such a tunnel in the rocks.
The closest similar phenomenon on Earth, scientists consider volcanic caves on the Spanish island of Lanzarote, says Prof. Carrer. He adds that Italian scientists visited the island during their research.
Scientists suspected that there are caves on the Moon about 50 years ago. But it was only in 2010 that the American space agency NASA sent an apparatus called the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter into lunar orbit, which used radar to study the places where the entrances to the caves could be.
As a result of analyzing the images obtained, the current discovery was made.
"It's amazing. When you make discoveries like this, you look at the resulting images and realize you're the first person in human history to see this," Karrer said.
He added that the authors of the study immediately realized that a lunar cave could be a good place for an astronaut base. "After all, it was in caves that life on Earth began, so humans could settle in them on the Moon as well," Carrer pointed out.
The cave they discovered has yet to be explored - and for that, the scientists hope to use radar, cameras or even robots. So far, they do not know the exact depth of the cave, nor the exact mechanism of their occurrence.
Scientists hope the discovery of the moon cave will help them study Mars, another space object located at a much farther distance from Earth.
Bruzzone and Carrera's work is published in the scientific journal Nature Astronomy.
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