Results for “surface construction” — Page 15

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Marshall Space Flight Center: Lunar Regolith Terrain (LRT)

Introduction: NASA is moving toward a new age of exploration and resource utilization of the lunar surface. Challenges related to exploration, resource utilization, and construction at the Lunar South Pole will require advanced technology and well-designed mission concepts and operations. NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) has added new capabilities to support surface mobility and construction activities to meet industry, academia, and NASA research and development goals for lunar applications. The Lunar Regolith Terrain (LRT) field is a new, large-area, lunar regolith simulant planetary analog testing ground for users interested in surface mobility and lunar construction activities. The LRT complements NASA MSFC’s other lunar environment testing facilities such as the Lunar Surface Simulator (V20 dirty vacuum chamber), the Lunar Environment Testing System (LETS), among many others. Lunar Regolith Terrain (LTR) Description: The Lunar Regolith Terrain field is an outdoor planetary analog environment facility located on base at MSFC. The lunar regolith simulant is JSC-1A feedstock material (volcanic cinder sand sourced from Meriam Crater, Flagstaff, AZ). The field contains more than 500 tons of lunar regolith simulant confined within a 125 ft x 125 ft (38 m x 38 m) area. The field is placed ~ 50% over paved parking lot and ~ 50% over a natural ground. Currently, the depth of regolith ranges between ~ 5 in - ~ 4 ft (~ 13cm – 1.2m) but can be modified to suit user needs. The lunar regolith simulant that makes up the field has representative geotechnical, geochemical, and optical properties of lunar mare basalt. An area within the LRT of lunar highlands terrain simulant is planned. Additional Features of the LRT: The LRT was designed to allow rapid modification of the terrain’s topography obstacles in the field. The terrain can be reshaped to suit specific testing requirements that may require flat expanses, steep hills, or heavily cratered and rocky landscapes. Large rocky obstacles in Fig. 1 are artificial landscape boulders (faux-rocks) that can be easily placed by users or removed entirely. Areas of the field also contain buried fiducials, large sheets, bar stock, and pipes of various composition and dimensions to allow for possible ground penetrating radar and shallow seismic studies. Rapid modification capabilities will also allow for burial of additional user-specific materials to enable in-situ resource utilization detection (e.g., burial of hydrogen sources for neutron detection or other materials). The field is also equipped with on-site office space with an air-conditioned and heated trailer with 120/240V power and lighting. The site has Wi-Fi and Cellular signal coverage. Direct radio frequency communication with the Huntsville Operations Support Center (HOSC) is in development. Additional on-site workspace and secure equipment storage is available in adjacent buildings. Accessibility to the field is straightforward with on-site parking and access for delivery of instruments, payloads, and additional equipment. Community Availability: The LRTF provides an accessible planetary analog surface environment for surface mobility testing, autonomous roving operations, developing advanced navigation techniques and operations development. Interested parties can contact the abstract authors for additional details, tours, and scheduling.

Lunar Regolith↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Marshall Space Flight Center: Lunar Regolith Terrain (LRT)

Introduction: NASA is moving toward a new age of exploration and resource utilization of the lunar surface. Challenges related to exploration, resource utilization, and construction at the Lunar South Pole will require advanced technology and well-designed mission concepts and operations. NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) has added new capabilities to support surface mobility and construction activities to meet industry, academia, and NASA research and development goals for lunar applications. The Lunar Regolith Terrain (LRT) field is a new, large-area, lunar regolith simulant planetary analog testing ground for users interested in surface mobility and lunar construction activities. The LRT complements NASA MSFC’s other lunar environment testing facilities such as the Lunar Surface Simulator (V20 dirty vacuum chamber), the Lunar Environment Testing System (LETS), among many others. Lunar Regolith Terrain (LTR) Description: The Lunar Regolith Terrain field is an outdoor planetary analog environment facility located on base at MSFC. The lunar regolith simulant is JSC-1A feedstock material (volcanic cinder sand sourced from Meriam Crater, Flagstaff, AZ). The field contains more than 500 tons of lunar regolith simulant confined within a 125 ft x 125 ft (38 m x 38 m) area. The field is placed ~ 50% over paved parking lot and ~ 50% over a natural ground. Currently, the depth of regolith ranges between ~ 5 in - ~ 4 ft (~ 13cm – 1.2m) but can be modified to suit user needs. The lunar regolith simulant that makes up the field has representative geotechnical, geochemical, and optical properties of lunar mare basalt. An area within the LRT of lunar highlands terrain simulant is planned. Additional Features of the LRT: The LRT was designed to allow rapid modification of the terrain’s topography obstacles in the field. The terrain can be reshaped to suit specific testing requirements that may require flat expanses, steep hills, or heavily cratered and rocky landscapes. Large rocky obstacles in Fig. 1 are artificial landscape boulders (faux-rocks) that can be easily placed by users or removed entirely. Areas of the field also contain buried fiducials, large sheets, bar stock, and pipes of various composition and dimensions to allow for possible ground penetrating radar and shallow seismic studies. Rapid modification capabilities will also allow for burial of additional user-specific materials to enable in-situ resource utilization detection (e.g., burial of hydrogen sources for neutron detection or other materials). The field is also equipped with on-site office space with an air-conditioned and heated trailer with 120/240V power and lighting. The site has Wi-Fi and Cellular signal coverage. Direct radio frequency communication with the Huntsville Operations Support Center (HOSC) is in development. Additional on-site workspace and secure equipment storage is available in adjacent buildings. Accessibility to the field is straightforward with on-site parking and access for delivery of instruments, payloads, and additional equipment. Community Availability: The LRTF provides an accessible planetary analog surface environment for surface mobility testing, autonomous roving operations, developing advanced navigation techniques and operations development. Interested parties can contact the abstract authors for additional details, tours, and scheduling.

Lunar Regolith↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Protecting Crew and Surface Systems with a Long-Duration Lunar Safe Haven

NASA’s Artemis program will send astronauts to the lunar surface for extended mission durations throughout the 2030s, with a focus on sustainability and extensibility for Mars exploration, as described in NASA’s “Artemis Plan”. However, NASA must place more emphasis on protecting both the crew and the exploration surface systems if they hope to achieve long-duration sustainability on the lunar surface. It is now reasonably achievable with excavation, construction, and autonomy technologies to achieve a significant level of protection that architectures have been unable to achieve to date. The Lunar Safe Haven (LSH) was proposed to protect astronauts, electronics, and other surface exploration systems from the hazards of the lunar environment, including radiation, micrometeoroid strikes, lunar dust, thermal vacuum, etc. During the study, Level Zero Requirements were developed for the LSH, and a decision analysis framework was baselined to evaluate concepts. The LSH Study also performed a comprehensive trade study, during which it identified numerous alternatives for establishing and maintaining a safe haven shelter on the lunar surface. This paper reviews the products developed during the study and presents the final recommendations.

radiation shielding↗

NASA NTRS1988

Crew activities, science, and hazards of manned missions to Mars

The crew scientific and nonscientific activities that will occur at each stage of a mission to Mars are examined. Crew activities during the interplanetary flight phase will include simulations, maintenance and monitoring, communications, upgrading procedures and operations, solar activity monitoring, cross-training and sharpening of skills, physical conditioning, and free-time activities. Scientific activities will address human physiology, human psychology, sociology, astronomy, space environment effects, manufacturing, and space agriculture. Crew activities on the Martian surface will include exploration, construction, manufacturing, food production, maintenance and training, and free time. Studies of Martian geology and atmosphere, of the life forms that may exist there, and of the Martian moons will occur on the planet's surface. Crew activities and scientific studies that will occur in Mars orbit, and the hazards relevant to each stage of the mission, are also addressed.

Clark, Benton C.↗

NASA NTRS1990

Bidirectional measurements of surface reflectance for view angle corrections of oblique imagery

An apparatus for acquiring bidirectional reflectance-factor data was constructed and used over four surface types. Data sets were obtained over a headed wheat canopy, bare soil having several different roughness conditions, playa (dry lake bed), and gypsum sand. Results are presented in terms of relative bidirectional reflectance factors (BRFs) as a function of view angle at a number of solar zenith angles, nadir BRFs as a function of solar zenith angles, and, for wheat, vegetation indices as related to view and solar zenith angles. The wheat canopy exhibited the largest BRF changes with view angle. BRFs for the red and the NIR bands measured over wheat did not have the same relationship with view angle. NIR/Red ratios calculated from nadir BRFs changed by nearly a factor of 2 when the solar zenith angle changed from 20 to 50 degs. BRF versus view angle relationships were similar for soils having smooth and intermediate rough surfaces but were considerably different for the roughest surface. Nadir BRF versus solar-zenith angle relationships were distinctly different for the three soil roughness levels. Of the various surfaces, BRFs for gypsum sand changed the least with view angle (10 percent at 30 degs).

Jackson, R. D.↗

NASA NTRS1977

An automated data generator for NASTRAN

A modeling system based on construction-in-context of geometry and physical properties data is adapted for NASTRAN finite element data generation. This system was originally developed for generating three-dimensional finite data for composite structures in PATCHES-III using parametric cubic models. These finite line, surface and volume models constructed using simple data directives will be subdivided into NASTRAN finite elements and their supporting data in the new data generator. Any geometry can be constructed as illustrated by a compressor fan blade with camber, twist and changing airfoil section and the shape then subdivided using a uniform or non-uniform mesh. Special emphasis is given to the adaption of construction-in-context to composite material property modeling. A PMAT series of directives is described for any one, two or three-dimensionally reinforced composite that allows the phase properties, as well as composite properties, to be generated.

Stanton, E. L.↗

NASA NTRS1992

Venus radar mapping from the Venera 15 and 16 spacecrafts: Results and restrictions

A description of the results of the Venus northern hemisphere radar survey in 1983-1984 from the Venera 15 and 16 spacecrafts is presented. In addition, we discuss some peculiarities in the function of the radar equipment that defined the technology of SAR data processing. Among these peculiarities are insufficient calibration of SAR and radar altimeter and erroneous automatic gain control data transmission from the spacecrafts. As a result, the procedure of image synthesis and mosaicking contained multistage image brightness corrections. This led to the fact that the average image brightness in a spot 100 km in diameter was constant everywhere in the mosaics. Twenty-seven radar mosaics in the Lambert-Hauss conic projection with 1-2 km spatial resolution covering 25 percent of the surface of Venus have been produced. A Venus surface roughness map was constructed by joint processing of SAR and altimeter data. The mutual calibration of the SAR and altimeter was made in the special radar session when the SAR and altimeter were declined from the local vertical at the same angle. The possibility of estimating relative variations in surface reflection properties over a tens-of-kilometers interval from Venera images is still being considered. Joint analysis of the coordinates of small features of the Venera and Magellan images is one more approach being used to refine the period of rotation for Venus.

Akim, E. L.↗

NASA NTRS2000

Optimization of Car Body under Constraints of Noise, Vibration, and Harshness (NVH), and Crash

To be competitive on the today's market, cars have to be as light as possible while meeting the Noise, Vibration, and Harshness (NVH) requirements and conforming to Government-man dated crash survival regulations. The latter are difficult to meet because they involve very compute-intensive, nonlinear analysis, e.g., the code RADIOSS capable of simulation of the dynamics, and the geometrical and material nonlinearities of a thin-walled car structure in crash, would require over 12 days of elapsed time for a single design of a 390K elastic degrees of freedom model, if executed on a single processor of the state-of-the-art SGI Origin2000 computer. Of course, in optimization that crash analysis would have to be invoked many times. Needless to say, that has rendered such optimization intractable until now. The car finite element model is shown. The advent of computers that comprise large numbers of concurrently operating processors has created a new environment wherein the above optimization, and other engineering problems heretofore regarded as intractable may be solved. The procedure, shown, is a piecewise approximation based method and involves using a sensitivity based Taylor series approximation model for NVH and a polynomial response surface model for Crash. In that method the NVH constraints are evaluated using a finite element code (MSC/NASTRAN) that yields the constraint values and their derivatives with respect to design variables. The crash constraints are evaluated using the explicit code RADIOSS on the Origin 2000 operating on 256 processors simultaneously to generate data for a polynomial response surface in the design variable domain. The NVH constraints and their derivatives combined with the response surface for the crash constraints form an approximation to the system analysis (surrogate analysis) that enables a cycle of multidisciplinary optimization within move limits. In the inner loop, the NVH sensitivities are recomputed to update the NVH approximation model while keeping the Crash response surface constant. In every outer loop, the Crash response surface approximation is updated, including a gradual increase in the order of the response surface and the response surface extension in the direction of the search. In this optimization task, the NVH discipline has 30 design variables while the crash discipline has 20 design variables. A subset of these design variables (10) are common to both the NVH and crash disciplines. In order to construct a linear response surface for the Crash discipline constraints, a minimum of 21 design points would have to be analyzed using the RADIOSS code. On a single processor in Origin 2000 that amount of computing would require over 9 months! In this work, these runs were carried out concurrently on the Origin 2000 using multiple processors, ranging from 8 to 16, for each crash (RADIOSS) analysis. Another figure shows the wall time required for a single RADIOSS analysis using varying number of processors, as well as provides a comparison of 2 different common data placement procedures within the allotted memories for each analysis. The initial design is an infeasible design with NVH discipline Static Torsion constraint violations of over 10%. The final optimized design is a feasible design with a weight reduction of 15 kg compared to the initial design. This work demonstrates how advanced methodology for optimization combined with the technology of concurrent processing enables applications that until now were out of reach because of very long time-to-solution.

Kodiyalam, Srinivas↗

NASA NTRS1997

Mars Surface Mission Workshop

A workshop was held at the Lunar and Planetary Institute on September 4-5, 1997, to address the surface elements of the Mars Reference Mission now being reviewed by NASA. The workshop considered the current reference mission and addressed the types of activities that would be expected for science and resource exploration and facilities operations. A set of activities was defined that can be used to construct "vignettes" of the surface mission. These vignettes can form the basis for describing the importance of the surface mission, for illustrating aspects of the surface mission, and for allowing others to extend and revise these initial ideas. The topic is rich with opportunities for additional conceptualization. It is recommended that NASA consider supporting university design teams to conduct further analysis of the possibilities.

Duke, M. B.↗

NASA NTRS1983

Far-infrared reflectance spectra of optical black coatings

Far-infrared specular reflectance spectra of six optically black coatings near normal incidence are presented. The spectra were obtained using nine bandpass transmission filters in the wavelength range between 12 and 300 microns. Data on the construction, thickness, and rms surface roughness of the coatings are also presented. The chemical composition of two coatings can be distinguished from that of the others by a strong absorption feature between 20 and 40 microns which is attributed to amorphous silicate material. Inverse relationships between these spectra and coating roughness and thickness are noted and lead to development of a reflecting-layer model for the measured reflectance. The model is applied to the spectra of several coatings whose construction falls within its constraints.

Smith, S. M.↗

NASA NTRS2014

Prestressing Shock Resistant Mechanical Components and Mechanisms Made from Hard, Superelastic Materials

A method and an apparatus confer full superelastic properties to the active surface of a mechanical component constructed of a superelastic material prior to service. A compressive load is applied to the active surface of the mechanical component followed by removing the compressive load from the active surface whereby substantially all load strain is recoverable after applying and removing of subsequent compressive loads.

DellaCorte, Christopher↗

NASA NTRS1992

Lunar Resource Assessment: Strategies for Surface Exploration

Use of the indigenous resources of space to support long-term human presence is an essential element of the settlement of other planetary bodies. We are in a very early stage of understanding exactly how and under what circumstances space resources will become important. The materials and processes to recover them that we now think are critical may not ultimately be the raison d'etre for a resource utilization program. However, the need for strategic thinking proceeds in parallel with efforts to implement such plans and it is not too soon to begin thinking how we could and should use the abundant resources of materials and energy available from the Moon. The following commodities from the Moon are discussed: (1) bulk regolith, for shielding and construction on the lunar surface (ultimately for export to human-tended stations in Earth-Moon space), and (2) oxygen and hydrogen, for propellant and life support.

Spudis, Paul D.↗

NASA NTRS1992

Lunar preform manufacturing

A design for a machine to produce hollow, continuous fiber reinforced composite rods of lunar glass and a liquid crystalline matrix using the pultrusion process is presented. The glass fiber will be produced from the lunar surface, with the machine and matrix being transported to the moon. The process is adaptable to the low gravity and near-vacuum environment of the moon through the use of a thermoplastic matrix in fiber form as it enters the pultrusion process. With a power consumption of 5k W, the proposed machine will run continuously, unmanned in fourteen day cycles, matching the length of moon days. A number of dies could be included that would allow the machine to produce rods of varying diameter, I-beams, angles, and other structural members. These members could then be used for construction on the lunar surface or transported for use in orbit. The benefits of this proposal are in the savings in weight of the cargo each lunar mission would carry. The supply of glass on the moon is effectively endless, so enough rods would have to be produced to justify its transportation, operation, and capital cost. This should not be difficult as weight on lunar mission is at a premium.

Leong, Gregory N.↗

NASA NTRS1992

Lunar preform manufacturing

A design for a machine to produce hollow, continuous fiber-reinforced composite rods of lunar glass and a liquid crystalline matrix using the pultrusion process is presented. The glass fiber will be produced from the lunar surface, with the machine and matrix being transported to the moon. The process is adaptable to the low gravity and near-vacuum environment of the moon through the use of a thermoplastic matrix in fiber form as it enters the pultrusion process. With a power consumption of 5 kW, the proposed machine will run unmanned continuously in fourteen-day cycles, matching the length of lunar days. A number of dies could be included that would allow the machine to produce rods of varying diameter, I-beams, angles, and other structural members. These members could then be used for construction on the lunar surface or transported for use in orbit. The benefits of this proposal are in the savings in weight of the cargo each lunar mission would carry. The supply of glass on the moon is effectively endless, so enough rods would have to be produced to justify its transportation, operation, and capital cost. This should not be difficult as weight on lunar mission is at a premium.

Leong, Gregory N.↗

NASA NTRS2004

Synthesizing 3D Surfaces from Parameterized Strip Charts

We believe 3D information visualization has the power to unlock new levels of productivity in the monitoring and control of complex processes. Our goal is to provide visual methods to allow for rapid human insight into systems consisting of thousands to millions of parameters. We explore this hypothesis in two complex domains: NASA program management and NASA International Space Station (ISS) spacecraft computer operations. We seek to extend a common form of visualization called the strip chart from 2D to 3D. A strip chart can display the time series progression of a parameter and allows for trends and events to be identified. Strip charts can be overlayed when multiple parameters need to visualized in order to correlate their events. When many parameters are involved, the direct overlaying of strip charts can become confusing and may not fully utilize the graphing area to convey the relationships between the parameters. We provide a solution to this problem by generating 3D surfaces from parameterized strip charts. The 3D surface utilizes significantly more screen area to illustrate the differences in the parameters and the overlayed strip charts, and it can rapidly be scanned by humans to gain insight. The selection of the third dimension must be a parallel or parameterized homogenous resource in the target domain, defined using a finite, ordered, enumerated type, and not a heterogeneous type. We demonstrate our concepts with examples from the NASA program management domain (assessing the state of many plans) and the computers of the ISS (assessing the state of many computers). We identify 2D strip charts in each domain and show how to construct the corresponding 3D surfaces. The user can navigate the surface, zooming in on regions of interest, setting a mark and drilling down to source documents from which the data points have been derived. We close by discussing design issues, related work, and implementation challenges.

Robinson, Peter I.↗

NASA NTRS1991

Petrology and provenance of Apollo 15 Station 6 core 15009 and its bearing on site geology

Petrographic and microprobe studies were conducted of six soil samples from six different levels of the 30-cm-deep single-drive tube core 15009 obtained from the regolith of the Apennine Front at Station 6 of the Apollo 15 site. A model for the near-surface stratigraphy of the site is constructed, with due account for the results of previous studies of surface and core soils. Highland rocks were found to account for 9 percent of the mineral and lithic fragments in core 15009. The observed correlation between crystalline breccia fragments and green glass indicate that the primitive regolith on the premare Apennine Front contained abundant crystalline breccia fragments that were mixed with puroclastic green glass added to that regolith early in the mare eruptive sequence. KREEP basalts were found to be the parent rocks for 40 percent of the core fragments. It is inferred that KREEP basalts of the Apennine Bench Formation underlie mare basalts at the site. Olivine-normative mare basalt fragments comprise only 14 percent of the core-15009 source rocks but are much more abundant away from the Front.

Basu, A.↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Hardware Systems and EDU Demonstration of the Tall Lunar Tower Project

The Tall Lunar Tower (TLT) project developed a robotic tower assembly system (RTAS) and TLT Truss engineering development units (EDUs) to perform a ground demonstration of supervised semi-autonomous robotic assembly of a truss-based tall tower. Truss structures provide exceptional strength-to-weight ratios for payload capabilities supporting large masses. On the lunar surface, tall towers are a critical structural system that will enable significant solar power generation by supporting vertical solar arrays and beyond-the-horizon communications at the lunar south pole, supporting the Artemis mission architecture, as well as a lunar economy. Tall towers, greater than 30-meters-tall, provide the elevation needed for more consistent solar power generation due to low inclination sunlight and deep shadowing from surface features on the lunar surface at the poles. The robotic structural assembly technologies developed for truss-based tall towers will also enable other large-scale functional lunar structures to be built, including launch plume deflectors, lunar safe havens for astronauts and assets, surface transportation for cargo, and other critical infrastructure. Robotic assembly of truss structures for lunar surface infrastructure is near-term enabling for future Artemis mission campaign and Moon to Mars Objectives needs for power and communication. The project team designed, fabricated, tested, and demonstrated the RTAS EDU by assembling a TLT Truss EDU in a laboratory environment. The hardware systems and the supervised semi-autonomous assembly process for a TLT assembled EDU design, along with descriptions of a hardware demonstration are presented.

In-space Assembly↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

NASA LSII Lunar Simulant Project

Introduction: America has entered a new era of exploration. NASA’s Artemis program will lead humanity forward to the Moon and prepare us for the next giant leap, the exploration of Mars [1]. To champion technologies needed to live on and explore the Moon, NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) established the Lunar Surface Innovation Initiative (LSII)[2].LSII's technology development portfolio includes: Utilizing the Moon’s resources; Establishing sustainable surface power; Building machinery and electronics that work in extreme environments, like super-chilly permanently shadowed craters; Mitigating lunar dust; Carrying out surface excavation, manufacturing and construction duties; and Extreme access which includes navigating and exploring the surface/subsurface. To support the development and testing of these technologies, LSII created the lunar simulant project, to create and/or acquire low-, medium-and high-fidelity lunar simulants to match the needs of STMD projects at all levels of technology readiness levels (TRL), as well as other NASA programs. There is not one bulk lunar simulant that will satisfy the needs of all projects. NASA's Approach to Simulants: Just as LSII's activities are being implemented through a combination of unique NASA work and public-private partnerships, NASA will work with commercial simulant providers to acquire simulants that meet NASA's needs. If warranted, NASA will develop simulants using government agencies, as was done with the NASA/USGS Lunar Highlands Type (NU-LHT)series of lunar simulants [3].NASA is also collaborating with the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory(JHUAPL) Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium (LSIC) in the development and characterization of lunar simulants [4]. Within NASA, a small team (< 10 people) is coordinating simulant activities across the agency, with team members located at several NASA centers. The overall objective of the project is to procure lunar simulants in sufficient amounts for earth-based testing of subsystems and systems in a variety of environments (i.e., laboratory, high-bay, thermal-vacuum chambers), required for Artemis missions to the Moon, as well as other missions carrying NASA lunar payloads, such as the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS)program [5]. Lunar Highlands Simulant: NASA's Artemis Program is targeting the lunar south pole region for initial human missions and the Artemis Base Camp. Hence, the LSII lunar simulant project is currently focusing on the mineralogy and properties of lunar highlands regolith [6 and 7]. Plagioclase-rich rocks (e.g., anorthosite, norite) are the dominant constituent in highlands simulants, with Shawmere, Stillwater, and White Mountain anorthosites being used in commercially available simulants. However, because these feedstocks are terrestrial in nature, they include hydrated minerals, carbon-bearing minerals, and other chemical signatures that are not present on the Moon, and these minor mineral assemblages need to be taken into account when trying to understand test procedures and results. Glass Component: While much attention has been placed on the rock/mineral component of lunar simulants, glass is just as important when creating simulants. The glass component in lunar regoliths is often greater than 50% by volume [8]. This component includes impact melt glass, dark matrix breccias, and agglutinates. However, this component is difficult, time-consuming and expensive to make. Most lunar simulants, past and current, have relied on basaltic cinder as a feedstock for glass. Getting better glass components at a lower cost, particularly agglutinates and glass with an anorthositic composition is a near-term objective that the NASA simulant project is trying to address . Characterization: It is extremely important for lunar simulants to be characterized by several analytical methods. Gruener et al. [9] and JHUAPL LSIC [10] conducted initial assessments of some of the commercially available simulants in 2019 and early 2020, before the global pandemic. Further analyses are needed to better quantify important parameters such as, modal mineralogy and glass content, particle shape, and particle size distribution. These quantified results can then be used in determining figures of merit (FOM) that show how well simulants compare to lunar regolith [11 and 12].

J E Gruener↗