{"id":4176,"date":"2023-11-03T09:00:24","date_gmt":"2023-11-03T13:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orbitalhub.com\/?p=4176"},"modified":"2023-10-30T10:54:16","modified_gmt":"2023-10-30T14:54:16","slug":"nasas-moon-lab","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orbitalhub.com\/?p=4176","title":{"rendered":"NASA&#8217;s Moon Lab"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"float: left; padding-right: 30px;\">\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 5px;\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 5px;\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"580\" height=\"326\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/JHls6msv4xw?si=dmMHUDd9HP2v5tUu\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 5px;\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>NASA dicit:<\/p>\n<p>The Lunar Lab and Regolith Testbed currently houses two large indoor \u201csandboxes\u201d filled with tons of simulated lunar dust. With both testbeds, most areas on the Moon can be simulated with a high degree of accuracy. <\/p>\n<p>The facility\u2019s first sandbox measures approximately 13 feet by 13 feet by 1.5 feet (4 meters by 4 meters by 0.5 meter) and is filled with eight tons of Johnson Space Center One simulant (JSC-1A) \u2013 making it the world\u2019s largest collection of the material. The JSC-1A simulant mimics the Moon\u2019s mare basins and is dark grey in color. <\/p>\n<p>The facility was recently upgraded to include a second, larger testbed, filled with more than 20 tons of Lunar Highlands Simulant-1 (LHS-1), which is light grey to simulate the lunar highlands. It measures 62 feet by 13 feet by 1 foot (19 meters by 4 meters by 0.3 meter), and can be reconfigured to be a smaller, but deeper, testbed. <\/p>\n<p>Sometimes researchers painstakingly shape the dust with hand tools to recreate, as accurately as possible, features astronauts and rovers are likely to encounter. These include tiny pits and small craters measuring as small as a couple feet to a few yards across. It may also mean placing small rocks and other debris to resemble actual places observed by Moon-orbiting spacecraft. <\/p>\n<p>One feature that makes the Testbed truly unique, is a set of bright, high-power lights that simulate the Sun\u2019s glaring rays as they are cast across the lunar landscape. Researchers can accurately recreate lighting conditions that are relevant to locations on the Moon\u2019s poles and across a range of lunar times \u2013 past, present, or future. <\/p>\n<p>Established in 2009 by NASA\u2019s Centennial Challenges Program as the Lunar Regolith Testbed in the NASA Research Park at Ames, the facility was created through a partnership between the then-called NASA Lunar Science Institute (now the agency\u2019s Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute) and the California Space Authority. Since then, it\u2019s been used year-round by researchers seeking a high-fidelity environment to test hardware designs intended for the lunar surface, including projects within the agency\u2019s Advanced Exploration Systems and Game Changing Development technology programs. <\/p>\n<p>Video credit: NASA&#8217;s Ames Research Center <\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\" style=\"margin: 5px;\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Lunar Lab and Regolith Testbed currently houses two large indoor \u201csandboxes\u201d filled with tons of simulated lunar dust.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[112,463],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lunar-explorers","category-videos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orbitalhub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orbitalhub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orbitalhub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orbitalhub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orbitalhub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4176"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/orbitalhub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4177,"href":"https:\/\/orbitalhub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4176\/revisions\/4177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orbitalhub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orbitalhub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orbitalhub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}