Little Miss Lives in a Moon Cave

Prepare yourself for a magical adventure, because Journey to the Center of the Earth now has a greenlit sequel: Journey to the Center of the Moon. According to newly published research from NASA-funded planetary scientists at UCLA, the moon has hundreds of pits and caves where temperatures stay at roughly 63° F, making human habitation a possibility.

🌕 More deets… This could become quite a big deal for lunar exploration and long-term habitation, considering the surface reaches temps of 260° F during the day (water boils at 212° F), and cools to minus 280° F at night.

The scientists studied one cave in particular, extending ~330 feet down past the surface. Inside, sunlight illuminates only part of the bottom – where it actually reaches temps of ~300°F – but the rest of it is out of reach, remaining permanently in the shadows (hence, perfect sweater weather). The shadows also offer some shield against cosmic rays, solar radiation, and micrometeorites.

• Two of the more than 200 studied pits have visible overhangs leading to some sort of cave or void, and there’s strong evidence that another may also lead to a large cave.

👽 Bottom line: Future babies may very well be able to say to their ancestors, “you merely adopted the dark, I was born into it.” NASA’s Artemis program is aiming to put an astronaut back on the moon by 2025, with a broader stated goal of enabling human exploration of the Moon and Mars.