Production of high fidelity lunar agglutinate simulant

As space faring nations consider manned and unmanned missions to the Moon, there is a growing need to develop high fidelity lunar regolith simulants that can accurately reproduce the properties and behavior of lunar regolith. Such simulants will be employed to verify the performance of equipment, mechanisms, structures and processes to be used on the lunar surface. One of the significant limitations of current terrestrial-based simulants, such as the popular mare simulant, JSC-1A, is the lack of agglutinates. This paper investigates the production of a lunar mare agglutinate simulant based on JSC-1A. A modified plasma processing technique was used to expose the JSC-1A regolith simulant to high temperatures and transform it to predominantly a glassy phase. Detailed characterization results are presented to confirm that the agglutinate simulant material produced during this investigation reasonably satisfies the primary requirements of an agglutinate simulant such as amorphous/crystalline content, particle size, morphology, vesicular structure, chemistry, and presence of nanophase elemental Fe.     

Investigating the soil removal characteristics of flexible tube coring method for lunar exploration

Compared with other technical solutions, sampling the planetary soil and returning it back to Earth may be the most direct method to seek the evidence of extraterrestrial life. To keep sample’s stratification for further analyzing, a novel sampling method called flexible tube coring has been adopted for China future lunar explorations. Given the uncertain physical properties of lunar regolith, proper drilling parameters should be adjusted immediately in piercing process. Otherwise, only a small amount of core could be sampled and overload drilling faults could occur correspondingly. Due to the fact that the removed soil is inevitably connected with the cored soil, soil removal characteristics may have a great influence on both drilling loads and coring results. To comprehend the soil removal characteristics, a non-contact measurement was proposed and verified to acquire the coring and removal results accurately. Herein, further more experiments in one homogenous lunar regolith simulant were conducted, revealing that there exists a sudden core failure during the sampling process and the final coring results are determined by the penetration per revolution index. Due to the core failure, both drilling loads and soil’s removal states are also affected thereby.     

模拟月壤铺粉过程DEM数值仿真

空基激光选区熔化（SLM）技术与原位资源利用（ISRU）概念结合,有望解决地外大规模基地建设的工程难题。SLM铺粉过程对成形件性能和质量有重要影响。基于非球形粒子叠加球模型方法,建立模拟月壤颗粒几何模型;基于线性弹簧-阻尼接触作用模型、Hamaker理论及牛顿运动定律,建立颗粒动力学模型;采用三维离散单元方法（DEM）及软球模型,进行不同工况下模拟月壤在铺粉过程中的流变特性研究。结果显示:所提模型和方法能开展指定工况和环境参数的模拟月壤颗粒系统流动性和堆积行为数值仿真研究;月面低重力环境导致粉床表面粗糙度变大、堆积密度和平均配位数变小;通过降低铺粉速度和优化刮刀型面,可以有效改善月基铺粉的粉床质量,获得更密实和均匀的粉床结构。      

Regolith-derived ferrosilicon as a potential feedstock material for wire-based additive manufacturing

Ferrosilicon is a primary metallic alloy produced during the reduction of metal oxides contained in lunar and Martian regolith by a variety of techniques. This study examines the usefulness of ferrosilicon as a candidate feedstock material for wire-based 3D printers designed for in-space manufacturing. Alloys of composition ranging from pure iron to 12?wt% Si were synthesized and their electrical and mechanical properties characterized. The melts were cast into rods for mechanical testing to determine ultimate strength and ductility. It was determined that the samples above 3?wt% Si were too brittle to be pulled into wire and ruptured at low strain values. The 3?wt% Si sample and iron had comparable mechanical properties relative to samples of higher silicon content but with differences in ductility and ultimate strength. Microstructure and compositional studies revealed the differences between the ductile and brittle samples as being the complete ferrite phase presence on the iron and low-Si content samples. This study establishes an upper limit on the Si content at 3?wt% in ferrosilicon materials to be used in wire feedstock in additive manufacturing for in-space applications.     

Studies in the search for life on Mars.

The ability of living organisms to survive extraterrestrial conditions has implications for the origins of life in the solar system. We have therefore studied the survival of viruses, bacteria, yeast, and fungi under simulated Martian conditions. The environment on Mars was simulated by low temperature, proton irradiation, ultraviolet irradiation, and simulated Martian atmosphere (CO2 95.46%, N2 2.7%, water vapor 0.03%) in a special cryostat. After exposure to these conditions, tobacco mosaic virus and spores of Bacillus, Aspergillus, Clostridium, and some species of coccus showed significant survival.     

CAS-1 lunar soil simulant

Lunar soil simulant is a geochemical reproduction of lunar regolith, and is needed for lunar science and engineering researches. This paper describes a new lunar soil simulant, CAS-1, prepared by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, to support lunar orbiter, soft-landing mission and sample return missions of China’s Lunar Exploration Program, which is scheduled for 2004–2020. Such simulants should match the samples returned from the Moon, all collected from the lunar regolith rather than outcrops. The average mineral and chemical composition of lunar soil sample returned from the Apollo 14 mission, which landed on the Fra Mauro Formation, is chosen as the model for the CAS-1 simulant. Source material for this simulant was a low-Ti basaltic scoria dated at 1600 years from the late Quaternary volcanic area in the Changbai Mountains of northeast China. The main minerals of this rock are pyroxene, olivine, and minor plagioclase, and about 20–40% modal glass. The scoria was analyzed by XRF and found to be chemically similar to Apollo 14 lunar sample 14163. It was crushed in an impact mill with a resulting median particle size 85.9 μm, similar to Apollo soils. Bulk density, shear resistance, complex permittivity, and reflectance spectra were also similar to Apollo 14 soil. We conclude that CAS-1 is an ideal lunar soil simulant for science and engineering research of future lunar exploration program.     

火星探测的微波遥感技术

从微波遥感的角度出发,综述目前国际上对火星的探测现状,列出对微波遥感探测有影响的火星表层土壤、岩层的结构、分布及其介电特性等参数的已有研究结果,分析对火星地壳表层水(或冰)存在可能性及其分布状态的研究动向.结合地球表面微波遥感技术的最新进展,提出用主动与被动微波遥感探测火星表面浅层土壤物质状态和分层结构的可行性分析,初步研讨了火星表层是否有水(或冰)存在的探测方案.      

Phobos regolith simulants PGI-1 and PCA-1

The Martian moon Phobos is the target of the upcoming JAXA Martian Moons eXploration (MMX) mission. There are currently no known samples of Phobos, so spacecraft hardware testing and scientific studies require Phobos regolith simulants. Here, we present two new Phobos regolith simulants: Phobos Captured Asteroid-1 (PCA-1) and Phobos Giant Impact (PGI-1). These two simulants reflect the two hypotheses for Phobos’s formation, and thus the two broad possibilities for composition. This work follows previous efforts to document the development of mineralogically accurate simulants, in an effort to overcome past pitfalls with inappropriate uses of simulants. We report physical and geotechnical properties of PCA-1 and PGI-1, including their reflectance spectra, grain size distributions, abrasivity, cohesion, strength, and hardness. Our intent is for PCA-1 and PGI-1 to be open standards for Phobos simulants, and we present the simulant recipes and production methodology for use and modification by the community.     

火星土壤物理力学特性分析

火星土壤既是火星表面探测活动的主要探测对象,也是表面探测器设计中需考虑的重要因素之一。火壤的物理力学特性将直接影响着陆器着陆缓冲系统、火星车移动系统等的设计。此外,在着陆器和火星车等表面探测器的地面研制过程中,需要研制模拟火壤,形成模拟的火星表面环境,开展相关的着陆器着陆缓冲性能、火星车移动性能等验证试验。迄今为止,人类已经有多个探测器登陆火星,获取了大量的有关火壤的信息,也研制了多种模拟火壤。通过对已有火壤和模拟火壤的物理力学特性分析,梳理出火壤物理力学特性的参数范围,可为我国火星探测器的研制提供参考。     

Biological space experiments for the simulation of Martian conditions: UV radiation and Martian soil analogues.

The survivability of resistant terrestrial microbes, bacterial spores of Bacillus subtilis, was investigated in the BIOPAN facility of the European Space Agency onboard of Russian Earth-orbiting FOTON satellites (BIOPAN I -III missions). The spores were exposed to different subsets of the extreme environmental parameters in space (vacuum, extraterrestrial solar UV, shielding by protecting materials like artificial meteorites). The results of the three space experiments confirmed the deleterious effects of extraterrestrial solar UV radiation which, in contrast to the UV radiation reaching the surface of the Earth, also contains the very energy-rich, short wavelength UVB and UVC radiation. Thin layers of clay, rock or meteorite material were shown to be only successful in UV-shielding, if they are in direct contact with the spores. On Mars the UV radiation climate is similar to that of the early Earth before the development of a protective ozone layer in the atmosphere by the appearance of the first aerobic photosynthetic bacteria. The interference of Martian soil components and the intense and nearly unfiltered Martian solar UV radiation with spores of B. subtilis will be tested with a new BIOPAN experiment, MARSTOX. Different types of Mars soil analogues will be used to determine on one hand their potential toxicity alone or in combination with solar UV (phototoxicity) and on the other hand their UV protection capability. Two sets of samples will be placed under different cut-off filters used to simulate the UV radiation climate of Mars and Earth. After exposure in space the survival of and mutation induction in the spores will be analyzed at the DLR, together with parallel samples from the corresponding ground control experiment performed in the laboratory. This experiment will provide new insights into the principal limits of life and its adaptation to environmental extremes on Earth or other planets which and will also have implications for the potential for the evolution and distribution of life.     

Upwards migration phenomenon on molten lunar regolith: New challenges and prospects for ISRU

As part of our research on the feasibility of producing commodities from lunar regolith by thermal-driven processes with minimal terrestrial precursors we need to characterize, reproduce, and understand thermophysical properties of the molten regolith still unforeseen under the lunar vacuum conditions at a scalable sample size. Two unanticipated phenomena, apparently caused by lunar melt’s surface tension under vacuum, have been revealed in our research work, vacuum void formation and upwards migration. In this paper we present our findings and thinkable explanation on the upwards migration phenomenon experimentally observed and consistently replicated as JSC-1A lunar regolith simulant melted at high vacuum. Upwards migration of molten lunar regolith will make future lunar ISRU’s melting processes both challenging as molten bulk material would migrate upwards along the container’s walls, and also promising on new opportunities for alternative ISRU’s sustainable processes as regolith’s upwards migration takes place in uniformed thin-film pattern. Among the potential ISRU’s processes that might use controlled thermal thin-film-based migration without the necessity of terrestrial precursors are production of feedstock for 3D printing, fractional separation of regolith’s component’s (O₂, metals, and alloys) via pyrolysis, film coating, purification of valuables solid crystals including silicon, and fabrication of key elements for microfluidic, and MEMS devices. Thermal upwards migration phenomenon on JSC-1A’s melt is formulated and explained by the authors as due to thermal Marangoni effect (also known as thermo-capillarity) in which temperature gradients within the melt’s bulk and along the crucible’s wall yield the surface tension large enough to supersede the gravitational force and yield the experimentally observed upwards thin-film migration. As far as the authors know, upwards thermal migration of molten JSC-1A (or other lunar simulant regolith) under vacuum has not been reported in the literature. A thermal mathematical model accounting for thermal Marangoni effect on molten JSC-1A agrees with what experimentally was observed, the formation of the meniscus on the melt-wall surface interface along with an incipient upwards migration in thin-film pattern along the crucible wall that, according to the model, experiences large temperature gradient, an important factor to trigger the thermal Marangoni effect along with the fact that surface tension of the molten lunar regolith material is temperature dependent.     

Annual solar UV exposure and biological effective dose rates on the Martian surface.

The ultraviolet (UV) environment of Mars has been investigated to gain an understanding of the variation of exposure throughout a Martian year, and link this flux to biological effects and possible survival of organisms at the Martian surface. To gain an idea of how the solar UV radiation varies between different regions, including planned landing sites of two future Mars surface missions, we modelled the total solar UV surface flux throughout one Martian year for two different dust scenarios. To understand the degree of solar UV stress on micro-organisms and/or molecules essential for life on the surface of Mars, we also calculated the biologically effective dose (BED) for T7 and Uracil in relevant wavelength regions at the Martian surface as a function of season and latitude, and discuss the biological survival rates in the presence of Martian solar UV radiation. High T7/Uracil BED ratios indicate that even at high latitudes where the UV flux is significantly reduced, the radiation environment is still hostile for life due to the persisting UV-C component of the flux.     

地外天体潜入式探测典型案例分析及展望

针对地外天体星壤剖面的潜入式探测任务,对星球表面热场、星壤剖面原位力学特性等科学目标探测的基本原理、实现方案和典型案例进行了资料调研与分析,并阐明了国际上开展地外天体星壤剖面潜入式探测活动的目的和科学意义。在此基础上,提出了我国月面采样科学目标拓展方案以及我国开展潜入式探测的预先研究规划,对蠕动掘进和冲击贯入式探测方案的基本原理和应用前景进行了分析。     

Bioaugmentation in growing plants for lunar bases

Microorganisms may be a key element in a precursory scenario of growing pioneer plants for extraterrestrial exploration. They can be used for plant inoculation to leach nutritional elements from regolith, to alleviate lunar stressors, as well as to decompose both lunar rocks and the plant straw in order to form a protosoil. Bioleaching capacities of both French marigold (Tagetes patula L.) and the associated bacteria in contact with a lunar rock simulant (terrestrial anorthosite) were examined using the model plant-bacteria microcosms under controlled conditions. Marigold accumulated K, Na, Fe, Zn, Ni, and Cr at higher concentrations in anorthosite compared to the podzol soil. Plants inoculated with the consortium of well-defined species of bacteria accumulated higher levels of K, Mg, and Mn, but lower levels of Ni, Cr, Zn, Na, Ca, Fe, which exist at higher levels in anorthosite. Bacteria also affected the Са/Mg and Fe/Mn ratios in the biomass of marigold grown on anorthosite. Despite their growth retardation, the inoculated plants had 15% higher weight on anorthosite than noninoculated plants. The data suggest that the bacteria supplied basic macro-and microelements to the model plant.     

Moon surface radiation environment analysis for February 1956 solar event conditions

The radiation environment on the surface of the Moon presents a new source of particles resulting from the interaction of incoming solar protons and galactic cosmic rays with the lunar regolith. Here we present a study of the fluence profile of primary and secondary particles on the top 1 m layer of lunar regolith for the spectrum of one of the hardest spectrum solar event, that of February 1956. Different regolith compositions and their influence in proton and neutron production and backscattering is considered, as well as the nature of the backscattered radiation. Simple geometry Monte Carlo simulations have been used also for calculating regolith shielding properties, and it is shown that a layer of at least 50 cm regolith is needed for significantly reducing the dose levels received by astronauts in a hypothetical lunar habitat.     

Low-cost solutions for Martian base

Technical and architectural problems of a Martian base have been arised in many publications. Usually there is one solution described in detail or general classification is presented. In this paper, a recognition of low-cost solutions for Martian architecture is analyzed. The overview through various building techniques based on previous concepts of extraterrestrial architecture is summarized. Several solutions taking advantages of the shape of terrain, aiming for cost decreasing of human settlement on Mars are proposed.     

火星电离层探测

火星已经成为深空探测的重要目标之一, 登陆火星并在火星生存是人类探测火星的终极目标, 因此电离层是必须了解的火星电磁环境. 火星电离层探测包括直接探测和间接探测. 直接探测精度高, 有较高的空间分辨率, 但是观测时间短, 无法提供长期稳定的探测结果. 对火星电离层的间接探测结果主要来自无线电掩星探测和顶部雷达探测. 无线电掩星探测可实现对火星电离层整个电子密度剖面的长期稳定探测, 但其空间水平分辨率较低, 且可探测的电离层太阳天顶角范围受到地球与火星轨道的限制. 顶部雷达探测对火星电离层的探测具有很高的时间分辨率和空间分辨率, 且同样可进行长期稳定探测, 为火星电离层研究提供了最新的支持. 通过对火星电离层探测的基本方法及典型观测结果的分析, 提出通过几种探测方法适当结合的方式, 同时对火星电离层进行观测, 能够大大推进对火星电离层的研究.      

Decomposition of sodium formate and L- and D-alanine in the Pampas de La Joya soils: Implications as a new geochemical analogue to Martian regolith

The organic compounds on the Martian surface are still undetectable by the previous Viking mission that has been sent to Mars even though they are expected to be there by exogenous and/or endogenous synthesis. The high abiotic reactivity has been the most acceptable explanation for the apparently absence of organic matter in the regolith.     

利用6S进行月光条件下遥感器信号模拟研究

以太阳为光源的卫星遥感器,可以采用6S或MODTRAN等辐射传输计算软件对其入瞳处的辐亮度进行计算。而在微光或月光条件下,遥感器是对观测目标反射的月亮辐射进行遥感观测,因此在进行辐射传输计算时需要代入月球的辐照度数据。可以利用已公布的月球表面反射率和已知的大气层外太阳辐照度来计算月球辐照度,并对6S辐射传输计算进行适当的修改进行计算。通过对月球辐照度计算原理进行了详细的描述并计算得到了波长在0.250μm~1.500μm范围内的月球表面辐照度,并给出了一个宽波段遥感器的微光动态范围。     

Effects of lunar and mars dust simulants on HaCaT keratinocytes and CHO-K1 fibroblasts

Exposure to lunar dust during Apollo missions resulted in occasional reports of ocular, respiratory and dermal irritations which showed that lunar dust has a risk potential for human health. This is caused by its high reactivity as well as its small size, leading to a wide distribution also inside habitats. Hence, detailed information regarding effects of extraterrestrial lunar dusts on human health is required to best support future missions to moon, mars or other destinations. In this study, we used several methods to assess the specific effects of extraterrestrial dusts onto mammalian skin by exposing HaCaT keratinocytes and CHO-K1 fibroblasts to dusts simulating lunar or mars soils. These particular cell types were chosen because the skin protects the human body from potentially harmful substances and because a well orchestrated program ensures proper wound healing. Keratinocytes and fibroblasts were exposed to the dusts for different durations of time and their effects on morphology and viability of the cells were determined. Cytotoxicity was measured using the MTT assay and by monitoring culture impedance, while phalloidin staining of the actin cytoskeleton was performed to address structural integrity of the cells which was also investigated by propidium iodide intake. It was found that the effects of the two types of dust simulants on the different features of both cell lines varied to a considerable extent. Moreover, proliferation of HaCaT keratinocytes, as analyzed by Ki67 labeling, was suppressed in sub-confluent cultures exposed to lunar dust simulant. Furthermore, experimental evidence is provided for a delay in regeneration of keratinocyte monolayers from scratch-wounding when exposed to lunar dust simulant. The obtained results will facilitate further investigations of dust exposure during wound healing and will ease risk assessment studies e.g., for lunar lander approaches. The investigations will help to determine safety measures to be taken during extraterrestrial expeditions in order to minimize risks to human health associated with exposure of human skin to dust contaminants.