Kaku, and 13 co-authors, reported in 2017 that intact lunar lava tubes offer a pristine environment to conduct scientific examination of the Moon's composition and potentially serve as secure shelters for humans and instruments. They investigated the SELENE Lunar Radar Sounder (LRS) data at locations close to the Marius Hills Hole (MHH), a skylight potentially leading to an intact lava tube, and found a distinctive echo pattern exhibiting a precipitous decrease in echo power, subsequently followed by a large second echo peak that may be evidence for the existence of a lava tube.
The search area was further expanded to 13.00–15.00°N, 301.85–304.01°E around the MHH, and similar LRS echo patterns were observed at several locations. Most of the locations are in regions of underground mass deficit suggested by GRAIL gravity data analysis. Some of the observed echo patterns are along rille A, where the MHH was discovered, or on the southwest underground extension of the rille.
The authors concluded that the LRS data to detect subsurface intact lava tubes is very useful. They found a characteristic feature in LRS data indicating a large second echo peak after a precipitous decrease in echo close to the MHH, a possible skylight of an underground lava tube. Several locations around the MHH (13.00–15.00°N, 301.85–304.01°E) exhibit similar characteristic features in the LRS data. Since there are no possible features on the surface that could cause a second echo peak, these locations are candidate sites for the presence of underground lava tubes or cavernous voids.
They noted that most of these candidate sites are at locations consistent with a mass deficit on the crossâ€correlation Bouguer anomaly map based on GRAIL data. In particular, some lava tube candidate sites are along rille A, in which the MHH was discovered, and on a possible underground extension southwest of the rille where the crossâ€correlation Bouguer map indicates a large mass deficit. In conclusion, the authors have identified an intact lava tube at Marius Hills on the Moon in SELENE LRS data.
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