Scientific Breakthrough

At the Lava Beds National Monument in California, scientists and geologists are investigating safety and predictability when it comes to exploring tunnel-like caves. Before sending up astronauts to explore the Moon or Mars, it’s important to figure out how to enter and navigate lava tubes and complex cave structures.

A geologist for NASA, Kelsey Young, tells Space.com that “tubes can vary in how cluttered they are, their shape and size, what their entrances look like, and more” and that no tube ever looks just like another one you’ve been inside. Lava tubes are created tens of thousands of years ago after volcanic eruptions, so the way that they stretch, cool, form, and erode is surely unique to the specific conditions that affect it. Space.com explains, “Exactly the same process once played out on both the moon and Mars before each lost their volcanic activity.”

Scientists are studying the Lava Beds as practice for the exploration of extraterrestrial tubes and caves. For humans to explore the Moon or Mars for long periods of time, camping out below the surface would protect from the very dangerous risk of space travel: radiation.

The scientists are applying different types of technologies to see how it would be best to prepare for entering extraterrestrial lava tubes.