Mission Concept: Cave and Lave Tube Exploration on Moon, Mars and Icy Moons for Eventual Settlement
Whitepaper #381 submitted to the Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey 2023-2032. Topics: Mars; Mercury and/or the Moon; primitive bodies
by Himangshu Kalita, Alberto Quintero Retis, Ashleigh Wissing, Brendan Haugh, Covarrubias Angie, Gatlan Nail, James Wilson, Jaxon Richards, Jesus Landin, Kairav Kukkala, Martin Vazquez, Nicolas Tan, Quinn Lamey, Richard Lu, Roberto Peralta, Virupakshan Vilvanathan, Ron McCandless, and Jekan Thangavelautham
Published onMar 18, 2021
Mission Concept: Cave and Lave Tube Exploration on Moon, Mars and Icy Moons for Eventual Settlement
Future missions will be targeting extreme and rugged environments such as pits, caves, canyons, cliffs and crater rims of the Moon, Mars and icy moons. We propose multiple small, robots called SphereX that would explore these sites with the intent on setting human bases that would be naturally shielded from surface hazards such as radiation.
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0)
