Why didn't NASA tell us about the lava tubes

Recently reported from the Japanese moon mission.

http://www.universetoday.com/46023/kaguy…

People here replying to questions about why we haven't gone back to the Moon often say "because there's nothing new to learn." I always say that that is nonsense. There are enormous things like this on the Moon that await discovery if only people will look for them. NASA's astronauts spent little more than a few hours exploring 6 widely separated locations.

"NASA mapped and flew around the moon in the 1960's as did the Russians; didn't they? "

Do you have any idea how big the bloody thing is? The early orbiters covered nowhere near even a small percentage of the surface, from a great altitude, and had low-resolution cameras anyway. The present day ones are in low orbits and are tasked with mapping everything down to small features.

Lava tubes were indeed hoped to be found sooner, but the resolution of the earlier orbiters and Apollo missions wasn't great enough to see the openings. Lava tubes are sort of the holy grail for establishing colonies. Great for shielding against micrometeorites, solar and cosmic radiation and can be sealed for airtight operation.


http://www.lunarpedia.org/index.php?titl…
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1991LPI..…
http://csxe.rutgers.edu/research/space/R…

The same is true for lava tubes found on Mars as well.

Where there's lava, there's tubes. They are a natural consequence of the way lava cools.

We have knows for perhaps a century that there are lava plains on the moon. Are tubes so unexoected?

Finally, yes, as previous answerers have correctly stated: NASA already told us all about them.

Cheers!

NASA DID tell us about the lava tubes, in 1985:

"..Ian O'Neill: How long have lunar missions been searching for lava tube "skylights"?