Liquid mirror: inside the temple planned for the Moon’s south pole

Looking ahead to the “spiritual, social, and psychological needs” of lunar colonists, Jorge Mañes Rubio, the ESA’s artist in residence, wants to build a temple near the south pole of the moon.

Rubio’s vision for a temple entails building a dome on the rim of the 21-km-wide Shackleton Crater. Such an effort would be an international affair, and NASA experts have already been eyeing Shackleton as a potential site for a moon base for quite some time. While the basin of the crater is in near permanent shadow, it’s rich with water ice, and the rim of the crater enjoys nearly permanent sunlight because it’s right there near the pole. It would be “an oasis of warm sunlight surrounded by a desert of freezing cold darkness,” said NASA’s Adrian Stoica.

The moon temple would be 3D printed from lunar soil in a manner similar in some ways to adobe construction. The temple’s interior would feature a large common space comparable with the agoras of antiquity. At the center of this space would sit not a religious altar but a sophisticated telescope, Rubio said, ideally using an advanced mirror made from liquid metal that could be brought to the temple in a bottle.

Concept images of the moon temple

In addition to the telescope aperture pointed out into deep space, the dome would also feature an “oculus” through which people could observe the Earth. The planet would be visible every two weeks from the rim of the crater. While there are some places near the lunar south pole where Earth is in sight 24/7, such constant visual contact would probably not be in the best interests of an outpost striving for permanence and self-sufficiency, said Rubio.

There is a certain symmetry in the idea of having a place reserved for introspection on the moon. Many a human has looked up at the moon, to feel its cool serenity.

“Lunar settlement represents a perfect chance for a fresh start, a place where there are no social conventions, no nations and no religion, somewhere where these concepts will need to be rethought from scratch,” Rubio said.

“Humans have brought flags to the Moon, but they’ve been bleached white by sunlight since then – almost as if the Moon is protecting itself from such terrestrial concepts. So this Temple is intended as a mythic and universal structure that can hopefully bring people together in this new environment in novel ways.”