The European Space Agency (ESA) and the German Aerospace Centre have teamed up to explore the dilemma of whether it is feasible to recreate a moon on Earth.

Scattered across an area slightly larger than a basketball field, the LUNA facility at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne contains 900 tonnes of crushed volcanic rock, similar to that found on the moon. A hung astronaut or rover will be tracked by moving ceiling-mounted trolleys that replicate the low-gravity conditions of the moon. The facility will provide "most aspects that we will encounter on the moon," according to ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst. "It’s the surface, it’s the lunar dust, the rocks, the lighting. We will work in spacesuits that limit our movement, limit our view," he added. 

The facility is known as LUNA or Lunar Analogue. Among other things, it provides artificial regolith in a 700-square-meter hall for astronauts from ESA, NASA, and other agencies to train travelling through lunar conditions. "We have about 900 tonnes of regolith simulating material in the facility to simulate the dusty environment and mobility on the surface," stated Juergen Schlutz, LUNA Facility Engineer and Moon Strategy Lead at the European Space Agency, during the facility's maiden press event.

Lunar Soil Simulation

The 700 square meters of artificial regolith are composed of volcanic soils from Mount Etna in Italy, the Eifel region in Germany, and Norwegian rocks.

A precise angle of light was used to simulate how the sun could hinder an astronaut's vision when humans return to the moon, potentially this decade, as two fully-suited astronauts, Matthias Maurer of Germany and Thomas Pesquet of France, marched across the hangar of the LUNA facility.

When visiting a crater on the actual moon, Maurer and Pesquet gave a demonstration of how they would gather samples.

European Space Agency
Image Source: European Space Agency

The astronauts' spacesuits will have cables fastened to the exterior that will be used to pull them in when they walk and to suspend them when they jump. Prototyping is still ongoing for this project. For the purpose of simulating and experiencing the effects of zero or microgravity, astronauts have reportedly employed parabolic flights and swimming pools, as per Deutsche Welle.

Parabolic flights employ modified jet aircraft to simulate gravity loss by ascending and descending from high altitudes at 45-degree angles. Astronaut training swimming pools are also specially prepared, and astronauts wear spacesuits to undertake simulation workouts.

According to the Associated Press, the facility's lunar soil is composed of volcanic rock mined in the Siebengebirge mountain range, not far from where the facility is located, and then pulverized and sifted to be as near to the moon's surface as possible.

Future Lunar Missions

By 2030, ESA has negotiated three slots for future lunar missions under NASA's Artemis programme. It presently relies on NASA and others to send its personnel into space. To get its astronauts into space, it currently depends on NASA and other organisations. As part of Artemis, the organisation is constructing the service module for the Orion crew capsule that will travel to the moon.

Astronomical debris and solar wind bombarded the Moon's surface for millions of years, resulting in the formation of lunar regolith. It hits the Moon's basaltic surface. A very fine, dense dust is the end product of the bombardment. If astronauts are to live and work on the Moon, they must learn to coexist with it. The agency therefore required a simulant.The agency partners developed EAC-1 specifically for LUNA.

Its foundation is powdered volcanic rock that was deposited over Germany's Eifel area approximately 45 million years ago. For a number of years, ESA has been utilising this material to create "moon bricks," which would enable lunar colonists to construct launch pads, roadways, and houses. Furthermore, lunar soil has a high oxygen content, such as that seen in the EAC-1.

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