GIMLI to Scout Marius Hills Pit for Lava Tubes — SkimNews
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- NASA selected three uncrewed lunar science missions for Artemis: a seismometer for moonquakes and meteorite impacts, an ice survey for water, breathable oxygen and rocket fuel, and GIMLI’s lava-tube investigation.
- GIMLI will land next to the Marius Hills pit rather than descend into it, using ground-penetrating radar, seismic sensors, gravity-field measurements and cameras to map the pit and hidden subsurface.
- GIMLI is a joint effort by the Planetary Science Institute, NASA, the Norwegian Space Agency and Honeybee Robotics; the first planned exploration of a lunar lava tube has no launch date yet.
- Marius Hills pit is a deep, shadowed opening suspected to be a natural skylight into a buried lunar lava tube.
- NASA says lava tubes offer thermal stability and shielding from ionizing radiation and micrometeoroids; a sufficiently thick frozen-lava roof can absorb asteroid impacts and protect crews from major solar storms.
- Nathaniel Putzig said lava tubes require volcanic terrain and that the heavily cratered south-polar highlands show little or no such terrain, making a tube-based Artemis base unlikely.
Why it matters: NASA’s three selected missions are meant to give Artemis planners moonquake data, ice locations and lava-tube geology. GIMLI addresses the third by assessing a suspected shelter’s dimensions and stability, information NASA calls groundwork for long-term living, although the first south-pole base is unlikely to sit inside one.
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