In discussions with the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), it was agreed that the first prototype regolith simulants produced by the United States (U.S.) Geological Survey (USGS) would simulate the lunar highlands regolith predicated on the NASA decision to put a base at one of the lunar poles that are highlands sites. It was also agreed that these simulants would be based on sample information for the Apollo 16 site because it is the only Apollo site that is close to being representative of the lunar highlands since it is more than 200 km away from the nearest mare. However, compositional modeling and petrographic studies indicate that Apollo 16 regolith samples contain a variable but significant amount of mare and potassium, rare-earth elements, and phosphorus (KREEP) components (up to 5% plus mare and up to 20% KREEP1). The effect of this contamination is that, although the Apollo 16 regolith is not completely representative of typical highlands overall, it is still compositionally quite close as determined by orbital elemental and lunar highland meteorite studies.2 The goal of these prototype simulants is to develop reproducible basic methodologies and procedures to produce simulants and to match the modal mineral and glass content and grain-size distribution of the Apollo 16 regolith samples as closely as possible. The purpose of this Technical Memorandum (TM) is to detail the specifications that were used to develop the lunar highlands type (LHT)-1M pilot and LHT-2M prototype simulants.
Design and Specifications for the Highland Regolith Prototype Simulants NU-LHT-1M and -2M
2011
24 pages
Report
No indication
English
Astrogeology , Lunar rocks , Regolith , Calcium phosphates , Crystallinity , Design analysis , Glass , Mineralogy , Olivine , Prototypes , Pyrites , Simulation , Specifications
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