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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Space Technol.
Sec. Space Exploration
Volume 5 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/frspt.2024.1510635

The Luna Analog Facility Testbeds (ESA, EAC): Contemporary Characterization Work of Highland (Lunar) and Mare (EAC-1) Lunar Regolith Simulants

Provisionally accepted
Aliz Zemeny Aliz Zemeny 1,2*Lorenza Sardisco Lorenza Sardisco 3Santiago Quinteros Santiago Quinteros 4Dylan T. Mikesell Dylan T. Mikesell 4Duncan Pirrie Duncan Pirrie 5Libby Rose Libby Rose 6Aidan Cowley Aidan Cowley 7Kamini Manick Kamini Manick 1
  • 1 European Space Agency (ECSAT), Harwell campus, United Kingdom
  • 2 European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC), Noordwijk, Netherlands
  • 3 X-ray Mineral Services, Colwyn Bay, United Kingdom
  • 4 Norwegian Geotechnical Institute, Oslo, Norway
  • 5 Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Science, University of South Wales, Pontypridd, United Kingdom
  • 6 Petrolab Ltd, Cornwall, United Kingdom
  • 7 European Astronaut Centre (EAC), Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The Luna Analog Facility, a joint ESA-DLR endeavour, consists of three components and spans an area of 1000 m 2 , providing testbeds of simulated lunar environments. The main sections within the facility are a large area filled with lunar mare regolith simulant resembling mare regions and a smaller, individual "Dust Chamber". The latter replicates highland conditions and contains approximately 20 tons of material, specifically simulating the fine-particle lunar regolith portion up to 250 µm. The Dust Chamber serves as a platform for testing various technologies, such as mechanical tools, robotic operations, in-situ resource utilization activities, and astronaut attire, as well as different procedures including rover and astronaut tasks. This work represents the geotechnical, geochemical and mineralogical characterization of the Lumina Sustainable Materials Ltd 2023 batch highland simulants, from which Lunar250 is intended for use in the Luna Dust Chamber. Additionally, this work provides new results for ESA's mare simulant, EAC-1. We provide data on particle size distribution, particle shape, abrasivity, density, water content, major and trace element geochemistry and modal mineralogy. As the simulants in the Luna Facility will be constantly overseen, this work organized by the Vulcan Facility (ESA) intends to support the monitoring of the geotechnical property variations of the simulants over time. Ultimately, we analysed several properties with different tools to emphasize how different methods and instruments affect the variability and reliability of the results.

    Keywords: Lunar regolith simulant, Testbed, highland, mare, Geotechnical properties, Mineralogy, geochemistry

    Received: 13 Oct 2024; Accepted: 03 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Zemeny, Sardisco, Quinteros, Mikesell, Pirrie, Rose, Cowley and Manick. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Aliz Zemeny, European Space Agency (ECSAT), Harwell campus, United Kingdom

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.