Located just north of the lunar equator within Oceanus Procellarum (the “Ocean of Storms”, and the moon’s largest mare), the ~1 mile long and 395-foot wide cave is an uncollapsed section of a rille (pictured above).

“This is a monster cave.” -Ashutosh Arya, senior Indian geologist; “Cave hope for moon house- Indian discovery raises possibility of shelter“,  The Telegraph India

With a roof estimated to be 131 feet thick, the lava tube cave could provide some invaluable benefits as a moon base, including:

• Natural protection from radiation and meteorites, with radiation only expected to penetrate down only about 20 feet of the roof’s 131;
• A far more balanced temperature than the surface (a steady -4°F compared to day/night swings of 248°F to -292 °F); and
• A ready, premade exterior structure.

“Such natural protection will help cut down the bill for future human habitats.” -A.S. Kiran Kumar, principal investigator for Chandrayaan-1′s Terrain Mapping Camera; ”Cave hope for moon house- Indian discovery raises possibility of shelter“,  The Telegraph India

The central location ain’t bad, either:

While there’s perhaps something less romantic about hiding in a cave versus building a big, shiny base on the surface, lava tubes like this should prove to be an invaluable resource. There could be more coming, too: Japan’s Kaguya identified a potential lava tube in 2009, and detailed surveying of the moon is really just getting started. (Check out NASA’s ongoing LRO mission and the public Moon Zoo project for more survey and mapping fun.)

For all the nerdy details, check out the ISRO’s published article on the finding  in the journal Current Science [PDF], and keep an eye here as the ISRO, NASA, China, and others pile up more imaging discoveries :)

Released with some fanfare (that’s the Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, there. [Editor's note: originally had Jiabao as the "head of state"; that would actually be the president, Hu Jintao, not the premier, Jiabao]), the images get more or less straight to the point: they’re of the Bay of Rainbows (Sinus Iridium), which China has slated to be the potential landing location of it’s Chang’e-3 rover mission.

The images include a 3-D map, and have a resolution of ~1.3 meters (for comparison, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has resolution up to 1 m [PDF]).

Check out the official Chinese release page for all the images :) (A rough translation notes the last image is labeled as “antarctic”, so it’s unclear if that’s also a Bay of Rainbows crater, or one near the lunar south pole.)

Coming a year and a half after the end of the successful Chang’e-1 orbiter mission, China’s new orbiter adds muscle as the CNSA scouts future landing sites, including the Bay of Rainbows.

While similar to the Chang’e-1, this mission will be more “sophisticated“:

“We started assembling Chang’e 2 at the end of 2008. The equipment and payloads on the satellite are combination of the old, the renovated and the new. This has raised challenges for us to ensure all equipment reaches the same standard.”- Tai Ping, ‘Vice Chief Director Chang’e Satellite System’,”New Scientific Targets for Chang’e-2“, People’s Daily Online

Those landing sites the orbiter will be scouting are for the Chang’e-3 lander, set for touchdown in 2013. Also set for landing in 2013 is the Indian-Russian Chandrayaan-2, not to mention landers from the Google Lunar X PRIZE…it’ll be busy up there come the end of ’13! :)

This brings up an interesting assertion by the Wall Street Journal last week—that this is the throes of an “Asian Space Race”, with China, India and Japan beginning to duke it out.

The idea of a new, regional ‘race’ could be backed up by the recent announcement that India’s Chandrayaan-2 will have all Indian payloads, contrasted with its predecessor, which carried (very successful) international payloads.

Regardless, the Chinese program is rolling along nicely, and it should be fun to watch as the Chang’e-2 starts to deliver results and India’s Chandrayaan-2 warms up.

For a neat video from Chinese media on the mission, click here, and here’s video of the launch itself:

From its humble fumbling-in-the-dark beginnings on Blogspot, Luna C/I’s come a long way. Now settled into a comfortable lunar trajectory, Luna C/I’s ready to take this momentum and carry in into big things. Good as things are now, I plan to inject serious propulsion towards what this site can achieve. Going to be an exciting third year :)

But, for now, some Luna C/I highlights of the past year:

• Started a highly successful new series, the Google Lunar X PRIZE roundups, covering each week’s tidbits from across the GLXP spectrum.
• Posted what I believe to be my best post: Moon Colonization: An American Historical Perspective, for the 20th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing
• Started a new series on selenography, Orbiting Atlas
• Began volunteering here in Portland at OMSI (the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry), for their awesome Space: A Journey to Our Future exhibit :) Starting to poke my way into real-world space goodness… (my background’s a dusty bachelor’s in Urban Planning; no fancy space universities or mission experience yet :) )

Ton of exciting news this year, from the mammoth discoveries of lunar water to Obama’s overhaul of NASA and private space.

Though, again, as great as this past year has been, I think it’ll pale in comparison to what I might be cooking up in year three…so, stay tuned;we’ve barely entered lunar trajectory yet :)

NASA’s Mini-RF instrument on India’s Chandryaan-1 orbiter has revealed, like the LCROSS ‘moon bombing’ and NASA’s other Chandrayaan probe (the M3) before it, evidence of water on the moon.

This time, it’s at least 600 million metric tons (!!) of ice deposits in craters at the lunar north pole—an enormous number! By comparison, the LCROSS impact turned up about 100kg of water (~22 gallons). Essentially this means that like Cabeus in the South, the ‘40 or more‘ permanently-shadowed craters investigated at the lunar north pole harbor that kind of ice.

“The new discoveries show the moon is an even more interesting and attractive scientific, exploration and operational destination than people had previously thought.”- Paul Spudis, principal investigator of the Mini-SAR experiment at the Lunar and Planetary Institute (and chief lunar scientist of Google Lunar X PRIZE team Odyssey Moon); “Tons of Water Ice Found on the Moon’s North Pole”, Space.com

This should mean that the North Pole—and any permanently-shadowed crater—should have any lunar prospectors (human, robotic, or otherwise) salivating.

Santa (as reported by Apollo 8) better like company… :)

For this edition of the Orbiting Atlas, we set sail off to…

Oceanus Procellarum (The Ocean of Storms)

The destination of Apollo 12 (as pictured above), the massive Oceanus Procellarum is perhaps the largest single region on the Moon (and by far the largest non-highland region)—hence the “Ocean” label.  About 1,300+ miles from north to south and ranging from 450-600 miles wide, it’s approximately the size of Mongolia.

Being essentially a giant Mare, the mostly-flat Oceanus serves as the lunar great plains. While generally featureless, there are a few points of special interest along the eastern edge—namely, the unusually-bright crater Aristarchus, and the longest groove on the Moon, Vallis Schröteri (the intended destination of Apollo 18 before cancellation).

Aristarchus is potentially an interesting target for geologic study and/or resources, as its brightness is due to its youth and relative lack of weathering from the solar wind.

In the long run, the vast size and flatness of the Ocean of Storms could lend to both convenient helium-3 harvesting (lots of elbow-room, few obstacles, and plenty to go around?) and long-range transportation and exploration tests, perhaps providing a comparable environment to large sections of Mars.

The Apollo 12 mission provides an interesting anecdote about the weather: while taking off from Earth en route to the ‘Ocean of Storms’, their rocket was, of course, hit by lightning. :)

Check out an HD video of the Oceanus’ northwestern side taken by the Japanese orbiter Kaguya:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX-9bO32t7s

Today, the Orbiting Atlas takes a whimsical turn to…

Baco

Located in the lunar highlands, about 380 miles southeast of the famous Tycho crater, the usually plain crater has taken on a new flavor of interest this past week…

The story begins with the new German Google Lunar X PRIZE team, Part Time Scientists, noting during a presentation that everything is better with bacon…including moon colonization. This slice of genius inspired a lot of folks on Twitter, cooking up the idea of a ‘Bacon X PRIZE’. The official Lunar X PRIZE blog, The Launch Pad, promptly posted a poll to name this tasty concept.

Despite the given name being “Baco”, it is named after British philosopher Roger Bacon. My research hasn’t turned up why, exactly, it wasn’t just simply named “Bacon” (if you know, feel free to comment below).

Now, for the conspiracy theorists and Jayson Stark loyalists out there: A search for ‘Part Time Scientists bacon’ brought up almost entirely results on, of course, Roger Bacon himself. Add to the pan that the man who named the crater, astronomer Johann Heinrich von Mädler, is himself—just like the Part Time Scientists team—German, and you begin to wonder…

Is German bacon destined for the Moon? And if so, will fate bring it to the very crater which (kind of) bears its name? :)

If I have any influence over it, I’ll make sure that someday, even if it’s 40 years down the road, bacon ends up in this crater, one way or another…because a little comedy in space goes a long way, right? :)

Today, we take a look at the finer details of the most historic location on the Moon:

Mare Tranquillitatis— The Sea of Tranquility

Located in the central-southeast of the near side of the Moon (see above), the flat Mare is, of course, the landing site of Apollo 11 (in the southwest corner; see below); but beyond that, the Mare has developed even more significance.

The tiny Apollo 11 landing site is only a small mark on the ~170,000-square-mile expanse, which is about the size of Iraq or the U.S. state of California. This helps cut off a potential conundrum: as it turns out, Mare Tranquillitatis could be one of the richest areas in all-important helium-3 on the Moon. But, considering that size, there should be plenty of room for both regolith harvesting efforts and any historical conservation. (And, by the way: the site has recently been photographed in high definition, so unless the images and orbiter that took them are also a hoax, Apollo was not a hoax :) ).

A leading Google Lunar X PRIZE team, Astrobotic, plans to explore the landing site in May 2011 with their rover.

The Mare, selenographically, has some interesting features—notably, Rupes/Dorsa (cliffs/ridges) and Rimae (fissures), but otherwise is a giant, flat plain…covered with valuable resources. Get those grazing herds of helium-3 harvesters ready! :)

Below is an HDTV video by Japan’s Kaguya orbiter, showing the Mare and the area of the Apollo 11 landing site:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=sV3GKy8Hr_A

This week, it’s the hard-to-miss crater…

Tycho

Perhaps the most conspicuous crater on the Moon, Tycho (named after Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe) sticks out like a sore thumb with its distinctive ray system. The rays are formed by ejecta from the original impact, and in fact, many of the surrounding craters themselves were created by wayward chunks of ejecta.

Apollo 17 took samples from one of the rays—more than 1,200 miles away! Surveyor 7 landed on the crater’s rim itself earlier, in 1967, recording a ton of mosiac imagery. The Apollo results confirmed that the crater is one of the moon’s youngest, at ~100 million years old.

I’m curious as to whether these rays may prove to have an interesting mix of resources—while the most valuable lunar resources (helium-3, water) collect on the surface from the outside, having such a spread of fairly young ejecta material could potentially make the Tycho region a popular mining spot.

My initial searches brought up more studies, though, in what makes the crater and its rays so shiny versus its potential mining value (mankind loves shiny objects? :) ). So this remains an open question, though geologist-astronaut Jack Schmitt from Apollo 17 is still around to ask :)

Speaking of interesting/shiny objects, Tycho was featured in 2001: A Space Odyssey as the location of the ominous buried monolith.

Tycho was also a location actually filmed, in spectacular  HD, by Japan’s Kaguya orbiter. Check out the flyby below:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bWhu2-2r5E

And, stay tuned as more and more private companies shoot for the moon to see if one decides to check out Tycho’s rays for itself…

Cabeus

A crater enveloped in deep shadow, about 80 miles north of Shackleton and the lunar South Pole (and ~1,000 miles south of the nearest Mare), Cabeus  had drawn a lot of attention because that permanent shadow meant a possibility of valuable water ice.

In October 2009, NASA proceeded to explore the possibility by crashing an LCROSS payload and its spent Centaur rocket into the darkness of Cabeus to try and stir up some of that ice. Turns out that “moon bombing” was successful—water was found in impressive quantities.

This makes the lunar south pole, already a prime target for colonial efforts, even more valuable a location. With only that short 80 miles seperating the solar-rich Shackleton rim and Cabeus’ water holdings, this region could rapidly become one of the most well-developed areas of the colonial Moon—the next New England? :)

Here’s a video of the moon bombing (embedded below), enhanced by Zebonka on Youtube to show the impact flash; and also, check out this brief video that gives a great feel of the location of Cabeus!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AHWiDLLDQI