MOSCOW, July 16 The cave under the surface of the Moon, discovered by American and Italian scientists, in addition to its advantages, also has disadvantages; a base in it would be very inaccessible, and it is also difficult provide resources for the life activities of astronauts and the operation of equipment, said Maxim Litvak, head of the laboratory of the Space Research Institute (SRI) of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Previously, the scientific journal Nature published an article by a group of scientists from the United States and Italy who discovered evidence of the existence of a cave on the Moon, accessible from the surface, which could protect people from the harsh conditions of the Moon and become a base for human habitation. According to the study, there is a hole in the Sea of Tranquility that leads to a cave about 45 meters wide and about 77 meters long. The cave is located approximately 150 meters below the surface. 
“As for the minuses, firstly, everyone watches adventure or horror films where people go down into a cave, and, as a rule, this does not always end well. Here, too, you need to go down more than 100 meters, and then it’s still unclear how things will go “It’s not easy for climbers to descend on Earth, but here you have to carry equipment in spacesuits, you can’t fit a lot of equipment there, you’ll need some special cranes and winches, it’s not that simple,” Litvak said.
In addition, according to him, it is still unclear what could be inside this cave. It is possible that it is littered with stones — fragments of lava rock. The scientist named the lack of resources as another disadvantage. In particular, there is no water there that can be used for drinking, producing oxygen for breathing and hydrogen as fuel.
At the same time, he recalled that ice is located in the circumpolar regions of the Moon, in the area of eternally shadowed craters. The lunar seas, where the discovered cave is located and there may be similar cavities formed by lava flows, lie in volcanic areas almost on the equator of the Moon. 
The advantages of such a cave, according to Litvak, are that it is located deep enough and due to this the temperature in it is stable — it stays around zero degrees, and does not fluctuate with a difference of more than 200 degrees, as on the surface. In addition, radiation, which is one of the most dangerous factors in promising lunar missions, does not penetrate to such a depth.
Litvak also explained that about 200 such potential caves had previously been discovered, but in this particular case we can say with some certainty that a really large cave was found. According to the scientist, his Western colleagues analyzed data from a high-resolution camera, which discovered the hole, and a radar, with which one can “look” under the surface. They examined many different models, and the most accurate interpretation suggests the presence of just such a cave.
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