Production of a set of lunar regolith simulants based on Apollo and Chinese samples

Abstract

Designing lunar shelters with appropriate construction techniques and in-situ materials is a novel and exciting field where many researchers from different countries are working. The first step in working in this field is producing lunar soil simulants on earth that will serve for improving lunar construction materials, as lunar soils are the only in-situ resources available for lunar constructions. Up to date, 9 countries have produced lunar soil simulants and the last contribution has been made by Tu & BULL;rkiye as expressed in this study. The technique, of which the properties are explained in this publication, enables the determination of simulant to any lunar soil. When the lunar construction materials are of main concern, the mineral and chemical composition of the lunar soils and the simulants are more critical than their certain geotechnical characteristics since the chemical interactions within the material will primarily define the con-struction material's performance. Hence, as an important preliminary step in accurate lunar soil simulant production, this study focuses on the determination and matching of the targeted chemical compositions for lunar soil simulants. For this reason, mineralogical analysis of the samples with XRD and chemical compositions with XRF analysis were determined. A novel method was applied during the deter-mination of the simulant, which kept all lunar soil samples with known characteristics as possible targets instead of employing only one targeted soil sample. This enabled the determination of the mentioned new simulant with best fit to a previously known lunar soil sample, while using an attainable budget. The procedure also enabled producing a simulant to a newcomer, the CE-5 Chinese lunar soil, in a very short time.& COPY; 2023 COSPAR. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.