The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicProtecting life and infrastructure on Earth and in orbit
Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
Go to topicThank you for liking
You have already liked this page, you can only like it once!
In a first step towards uncovering the Moon’s subterranean secrets, in 2019 we asked for your ideas to detect, map and explore lunar caves. Five ideas were selected to be studied in more detail, each addressing different phases of a potential mission.
This study from Canadian aerospace company Canadensys investigated scouting and mapping lava tubes from the Moon’s surface. Photographs of some lunar pit craters clearly show a cavern beneath the surface. This has raised the exciting possibility that at least some lunar pits are ‘skylights’ into extensive lava tubes, however there are also geologically plausible mechanisms for the existence of much smaller, more localised voids that are less useful to explore. This project investigated first scouting out prospective lunar pits using a small, inexpensive lunar-surface rover mission that would measure the gravitational field around pits to search for the presence of lava tubes. This information could be used to plan a more advanced mission that can enter tubes via pits.