All astronauts reaching the surface of the moon will first be greeted by a plume of dirt, sent to fly by the boosters of their spacecraft. They will emerge and put start -up imprints in dirt, take samples and study dirt, and finally they can use dirt to make fuel and other supplies necessary to maintain a long -term lunar presence. When it comes to exploring the moon, it's all about dirt.
Planetary physicist Philip Metzger of the University of Florida Centrale is the king of moon dirt, or Régolith. In 2013, he co-founded a group of research laboratories at Kennedy Space Center in NASA, Florida, where research teams spend their days working with an artificial lunar regolith, such as the illustrated sample below, to know how it behaves and what we can do. With the NASA Artemis program aimed at handing humans to the surface of the moon in 2027 and finally to install a permanent base, this knowledge becomes more and more important.
The regolith will be both a danger to astronauts because they land and a crucial resource when they build. Metzger works with scientists in a variety of laboratories who discover how Protect astronauts and their dwellings from sharp and perilous dust grains and how to use dirt to make fuel and radiation shielding.
He spoke to New scientist About a The permanent human presence on the moon could look like the reason why the regolith is so important for this vision and how to understand this thick …
