HUMAN SETTLEMENTS ON THE MOON WILL DEPEND ON ANSWERING TWO FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS

Making way for human settlement on moon :-

India's Chandrayaan-1 mission has identified tunnels below the surface of the moon, a top space scientist said on Wednesday and maintained that human habitation could be possible in those "tubes" in the future.

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Director of Indian Space Research Organisation's Space Applications Centre based in Ahmedabad, Dr Ranganath R Navalgund said the terrain mapping camera, an Indian instrument on the lunar mission, has found "new types of rocks" and hollow tunnels.

These tubes were formed after the flow of lava from volcanoes, he contended.

"Tubes which are hollow have been found below the surface of the moon. Such things have also been identified from the Chandrayaan mission... from terrain mapping camera, which was our own instrument".

"Now those tunnels which have not collapsed ... which are below the surface of the moon and which have been identified ... are somewhat interesting features," Navalgund told media persons in Bangalore.

"Not today, not tomorrow but in years to come, they (those tunnels) could be possible areas where one could have certain habitation....", he said, adding that scientists were currently investigating this finding.

The new experiments could help answer both of these questions. One experiment will probe the mysteries of lunar geology — particularly, the ancient volcanic activity that shaped the riven and pock-marked orb we see today. The other experiment will test how the Moon’s gravity and radiation affect living cells — crucial health information to enable humans to live and work safely on the Moon for extended periods of time.

Both of these experiments, which will be shot into space by commercial launch companies, promise to deliver data that will be crucial to meeting Artemis’s goal of establishing a lunar habitat for humans by 2030. But beyond that, the information NASA and the project scientists glean can also help design future crewed lunar missions — and perhaps even crewed missions further afield in space.

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The experiments are part of NASA’s Payloads and Research Investigations on the Surface of the Moon (PRISM) initiative, which invites outside organizations and companies to pitch NASA ideas and tech to take to the Moon. In total, the program will award up to $2.6 billion worth of contracts split up between each selected experiment.

enable more permanent human dwellings.

Perhaps the biggest challenge of living in space, including on the Moon, would be that humans will have to endure continuous exposure to radiation at levels not experienced naturally on Earth. Radiation exposure, as we all know, can have significant long-term effects on health.

Currently, you would reach the maximum tolerated radiation exposure just on the trip to Mars.”

“We really know so little about the long-term effects of chronic medium-dose radiation,” says Corey Nislow, a molecular biologist at the University of British Columbia. Nislow is not involved with the LEIA experiment, but his team has a similar yeast-based radiation monitoring project that will launch to space aboard Artemis I in the latter half of 2022.

Yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) is a common model organism for studying DNA damage in humans. That's because, at the most basic molecular level, yeast cell biology is remarkably similar to human cell biology.

“You can probably make a list of ten subcategories of DNA repair, and all of them are conserved between yeast and human cells,” says Nislow.

We know that radiation in space is bad news: It hits DNA like a wrecking ball that sizzles skin, impairs motor functions, and even causes cancer. On Earth, the most dangerous doses of radiation from space are blocked by our planet's atmosphere and magnetic field before they can reach the surface. The Moon, like Mars, has very little atmosphere to shield it from harmful solar winds and cosmic rays. Researchers aren’t completely sure how Moon-related doses of radiation will affect our DNA.

The yeast cells aboard LEIA and experiments like Nislow’s will give scientists a better idea of which genes are most vulnerable to radiation damage. This, in turn, will help them develop effective drug treatments to minimize its effects on human astronauts over a prolonged period — an absolutely crucial step toward Artemis's long-term goal of getting to Mars.

“Currently, you would reach the maximum tolerated radiation exposure just on the trip to Mars,” Nislow says.