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Looking ahead to the "spiritual, social, and psychological needs" of lunar colonists, Jorge Mañes Rubio, the ESA's creative person in residence, wants to build a temple virtually the due 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 every bit a potential site for a moon base for quite some time. While the bowl of the crater is in virtually permanent shadow, information technology's rich with water water ice, and the rim of the crater enjoys nearly permanent sunlight because it's correct there near the pole. It would be "an haven of warm sunlight surrounded by a desert of freezing cold darkness," said NASA'due south Adrian Stoica.

The moon temple would be 3D printed from lunar soil in a way 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 heart 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 canteen.

Concept images of the moon temple

In improver 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 exist visible every two weeks from the rim of the crater. While there are some places nigh the lunar south pole where Globe 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 sure symmetry in the idea of having a place reserved for introspection on the moon. Many a human has looked upward at the moon, to feel its cool serenity.

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

"Humans have brought flags to the Moon, merely they've been bleached white by sunlight since then – nigh as if the Moon is protecting itself from such terrestrial concepts. So this Temple is intended equally a mythic and universal structure that can hopefully bring people together in this new environs in novel ways."