Revealed; NASA Plans To Build A Moon Colony Using Robots

OUR moon has huge cavernous craters which open onto the surface, but sunlight never reaches the bottom, making them very dark and extremely cold.

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The proposal is being further explored by NASA

But Nasa thinks one day human colonies could be set up inside them.

Human colonisation of the Moon, after robots have hopefully made it hospitable, is one of a series of wildly ambitious preliminary proposals the space agency is being funded to explore further.

The Moon proposal would involve a test run at the Shackleton Crater, twice the size of Washington DC, on the Lunar South Pole.

This means sending a rover droid vehicle to set up solar reflectors, which would reflect sunlight so it went inside the crater and caverns below.

The crater would be filled with solar-powered transformers which could then be used to power equipment and make it hospitable to humans.

Robots would have to be programmed to build a mini Earth oasis on the Moon before anyone could live there.

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Could robots create habitable colonies on the Moon?

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The Moon

Nasa

Nasa graphic showing how power would be installed in the crater

The Moon proposal would involve a test run at the Shackleton Crater, twice the size of Washington DC, on the Lunar South Pole.

NASA spokesman

The crater is 130 square miles and surrounded on all sides by 14,000 feet high mountains above it. Without sunlight it is -128C.

Nasa has been granted £320,000 to continue the study over the next two years and develop a prototype.

It said water has also been found in the crater in icy deposits, meaning liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen can be produced at what would become a stop over to Mars.

Other far out projects being further explored include reaching the furthest end of the solar system.

Other plans with stage-two funding are:

• Developing an unmanned probe powered by electric propulsion which could reach the edge of our solar system in 15 years instead of the 35 years it took the Voyager 1 craft. This would mean being able to reach our neighbouring solar system in 9,000 years.

• Creating planet-exploring rovers powered by chemical energy so they can operate in dark environments without solar power. This would allow an exploration of Venus, whose cloud cover prevents any sun getting through, and the moons of the outer solar system.

• Developing a squid-like robot submarine to explore the nitrogen lakes buried miles under ice on Saturn’s moon Titan, where scientists believe life could exist.

 Original Article:http://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/590958/REVEALED-Nasa-plan-to-send-robots-to-Moon-to-build-colony-humans-may-one-day-live-in