{"id":843380,"date":"2026-08-04T16:12:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T16:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/843380\/"},"modified":"2026-08-04T16:12:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T16:12:08","slug":"nasa-backs-wild-plan-for-a-laser-powered-drone-to-explore-giant-caves-below-the-moons-surface","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/843380\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA Backs Wild Plan for a Laser-Powered Drone to Explore Giant Caves Below the Moon’s Surface"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just under the surface of the Moon, subterranean caverns stretch out thousands of feet (hundreds of meters) in diameter\u2014some as much as 1,000 times more vast<\/a> than similar lava tubes carved out by volcanic activity here on Earth. Scientists have long schemed about refurbishing these lunar caves<\/a> into sites for exploratory bases on the Moon<\/a>, given the caves\u2019 natural protection from cosmic radiation beneath thick layers of regolith and cooled magma.<\/p>\n

And now, after decades<\/a> of more speculative<\/a> and long-distance<\/a> research, it looks like NASA is putting its money where its mouth is. The U.S. space agency announced that it will fund research by Austin-based Stone Aerospace, Inc. to develop a tethered lunar-spelunking drone\u2014powered via laser light that will be beamed through a system of fiber optic cables conjoining it to a lunar rover on the Moon\u2019s surface.<\/p>\n

This power-over-fiber (PoF) design, according to NASA\u2019s announcement<\/a>, will manage the neat trick of meeting three critical needs for this mission: It will act as a typical broadband fiber-optic cable, assuring high-speed data transmission around otherwise impenetrable rock; it will provide onboard electrical power; and it will provide laser-enhanced thrust for the drone\u2019s \u201cnon-polluting cold-gas propulsion system.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe proposed study could enable the first off-world cave exploration,\u201d Stone Aerospace\u2019s physics lead Gilly Elor noted in a statement. \u201cAdditionally, our technology has broad dual-use potential for terrestrial applications, enabling long-range continuous optical power transmission to mobile platforms on land, in air, or underwater.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pitch black <\/p>\n

Like Earth\u2019s lava tubes\u2014including those recently studied<\/a> by NASA astrobiologists in Hawaii\u2014the Moon\u2019s version of these geological formations were created as ancient rivers of lava plowed through the lunar landscape, cooling faster near the surface and leaving behind long, hollow tunnels.<\/p>\n

As part of the proposed Lunar Underground eXplorer (LUX) mission, Stone Aerospace\u2019s hovering robotic explorer will descend into the Mare Tranquillitatis lunar skylight, a yawning chasm about the size of two football fields roughly 250 miles (400 kilometers) away<\/a> from where Apollo 11 landed. The Mare Tranquillitatis skylight is known to be about 436 feet (133 meters) deep and was only recently discovered to be the portal to a cave network, thanks to radar data collected by NASA\u2019s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2010 but only just analyzed<\/a> by Italian geologists in 2024.<\/p>\n

Elor\u2014who was once a visiting research scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a veteran explorer<\/a> of deep caves like Sistema Cheve in Oaxaca, Mexico\u2014emphasized that there would be \u201cserious challenges\u201d navigating the depths of Mare Tranquillitatis.<\/p>\n

\u201c[It] will be energetically demanding (due to complete darkness),\u201d Elor wrote. There will be no GPS navigation to assist with the \u201ccompletely un-mapped\u201d 3D environment, she added. And, on top of that, \u201cthe system must be non-polluting so as to not affect sensor measurements of the pristine environment,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The descent <\/p>\n

NASA awarded Elor\u2019s team $175,000 for preliminary research into this mission as part of the $3.2 million in total that it dispersed<\/a> via its NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Phase I awards<\/a> this July.<\/p>\n

\u201cNASA has outlined an ambitious vision for the future of space exploration, we\u2019re returning the Moon to stay, advancing to Mars, and pushing to deepen our understanding of space,\u201d NASA\u2019s director of its Advanced Research and Technology division, Greg Stover, said<\/a> in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cAchieving that will require more than incremental technological advancement,\u201d Stover said. \u201cIt means we need great leaps. These awards are the kinds of innovation the world needs NASA to help foster.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Elor, Stone Aerospace\u2019s PoF drone designs will prove capable as NASA missions advance onward to the Red Planet as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile other lunar lava tube mission proposals exist, none have the unique combinations of enabling elements of our concept,\u201d Elor said. \u201cTaken together we posit that these will significantly enhance the range, duration, and quality of science and exploration for subsurface lunar (and eventually Martian) exploration.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just under the surface of the Moon, subterranean caverns stretch out thousands of feet (hundreds of meters) in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":843381,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[64,63,182245,255978,131,105,42593],"class_list":["post-843380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-caves","tag-lunar-base","tag-nasa","tag-technology","tag-the-moon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=843380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/843381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=843380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=843380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=843380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}