Servo - January 2013

ROBOT IN A DEEP HOLE

William 'Red' Whittaker hopes that by 2015, his robot — or something like it — will be rappelling down a very deep hole on the Moon.

This hole was discovered a little over three years ago when Japanese researchers published images from the satellite SELENE1. However, spacecraft orbiting the Moon have been unable to see into its shadowy recesses.

“This is authentic exploration. This is the real deal,” says Whittaker — a roboticist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA — whose robots have descended into an Alaskan volcano, and also helped to clean up the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. “This is really going where none have gone before.” Over the next two years, the NIAC (NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts) program will spend about $500,000 USD developing Whittaker's creations. The prototype he tested at a coal mine could be lowered into the revealed Moon pit to check the walls for openings.A more ambitious approach would be to have a robot that jumps down the hole or lowers itself using a cable. The first prototype of such a machine — a four-wheeled cave crawler — can drive itself around underground and is already practicing in the mine's tunnels. Onboard lasers sweep the floors, walls, and ceilings to map out the tunnels.

Ever since the hole was discovered, researchers have been keen to work out its origin. Estimated to be about 65 meters wide and at least 80 meters deep, it seems too big to be just a crater. Plus, its location in the once-volcanic Marius Hills region suggests that the opening is a 'skylight' — an entrance to an intact horizontal tunnel beneath the surface, carved long ago by flowing lava.

Lava tubes have long been considered good locations for building lunar bases. “Their rocky ceilings can protect humans

William Whittaker's cave-crawling robot could one day explore lunar caverns.

from micrometeorite impacts and cosmic rays,” says Carolyn van der Bogert, a geologist at the University of Münster in Germany.

Protected Moon caves may also house records of the history of the Moon and solar system. Rocks that have been shielded from damage could look just like the surface did when it first cooled, or have textures that have been molded by hidden processes going on inside the Moon, explains Penelope Boston, a cave scientist and astrobiologist at New Mexico Tech in Socorro. Solar wind particles implanted billions of years ago could also provide clues about the early evolution of the Sun, according to van der Bogert.

“We don't really know what's down there,” says Boston. “We might be punching down through to a deeper layer that we have not seen from the small amount of lunar material collected at the surface.”

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