• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.141-144
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• 2022

By providing an environment where energetic particles and micrometeorites can not penetrate, caves on Mars may serve as a human shelter in future Mars explorations. More than 1,000 cave entrance candidates have been detected; however, their physical characteristics that can be utilized in detecting more candidates have not been explored in detail. In this paper, we explore the nighttime temperature of 100 cave entrance candidates and their surrounding areas to investigate 1) the nighttime temperature tendencies relative to their surrounding areas and 2) the extent of these temperature differences. We find that 79% of the cave entrance candidates exhibit higher temperatures than the surrounding areas, and 59% show a temperature difference over 20K, suggesting that the cave entrances may generally show higher temperatures than the surrounding areas during the nighttime.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.141-144
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• 2014

Recently, cave candidates have been discovered on other planets besides the Earth, such as the Moon and Mars. When we go to other planets, caves could be possible human habitats providing natural protection from cosmic threats. In this study, seven cave candidates have been found on Pavonis Mons and Ascraeus Mons in Tharsis Montes on Mars. The cave candidates were selected using the images of the Context Camera (CTX) on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The Context Camera could provide images with the high resolution of 6 meter per pixel. The diameter of the candidates ranges from 50 to 100m. Cushing et al. (2007) have analyzed the temperature change at daytime and nighttime using the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) for the sites of potential cave candidates. Similarly, we have examined the temperature change at daytime and at nighttime for seven cave candidates using the method of Cushing et al. (2007). Among those, only one candidate showed a distinct temperature change. However, we cannot verify a cave based on the temperature change only and further study is required for the improvement of this method to identify caves more clearly.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.21-28
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• 2016

Caves can serve as major outposts for future human exploration of the Moon and Mars. In addition, caves can protect people and electronic equipment from external hazards such as cosmic ray radiation and meteorites impacts and serve as a shelter. Numerous pit craters have been discovered on the Moon and Mars and are potential entrances to caves; the principal topographic features of pit craters are their visible internal floors and pits with vertical walls. We have devised two topographical models for investigating the relationship between the topographical characteristics and the inner void of pit craters. One of our models is a concave floor void model and the other is a convex floor tube model. For each model, optical photographs have been obtained under conditions similar to those in which optical photographs have been acquired for craters on the Moon and Mars. Brightness profiles were analyzed for determining the profile patterns of the void pit craters. The profile patterns were compared to the brightness profiles of Martian pit craters, because no good-quality images of lunar pit craters were available. In future studies, the model profile patterns will be compared to those of lunar pit craters, and the proposed method will likely become useful for finding lunar caves and consequently for planning lunar bases for manned lunar expeditions.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.138.2-138.2
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• 2012

Cave on the Moon is considered as the most appropriate place for human to live during the frontier lunar exploration. While the lava flows, the outer crust gets cooled and solidified. Then, the empty space is remained inside after lava flow stops. Such empty space is called the lava caves. Those lava tubes on the Earth are formed mostly by volcanic activity. However, the lava tubes on satellite like Moon and planet like Mars without volcanic activity are mostly formed by the lava flow inside of the crater made by large meteorite impact. Some part of lava tube with collapsed ceiling appears as the entrance of the cave. Such area looks like a deep crater so called a pit crater. Four large pit craters with diameter of > 60 m and depth of > 40 m are found without difficulty from Kaguya and LRO mission image archives. However, those are too deep to use as easily accessible human frontier base. Therefore, now we are going to identify some smaller lunar caves with accessible entrances using LRO camera images of 0.5 m/pixel resolution. Earth's lava caves and their entrances are well photographed by surface and aerial camera in immense volume. Thus, if the image data are sorted and archived well, those images can be used in comparison with the less distinct lunar cave and entrance images due to its smaller size. Then, we can identify the regions on the Moon where there exist caves with accessible entrances. The database will be also useful in modeling geomorphology for lunar and Martian caves for future artificial intelligence investigation of the caves in any size.