Luna Hall: DLR tests the search for water ice in lunar soil
Humans will need water on the Moon. In the Luna Hall in Cologne, the DLR has shown how ice can be detected in lunar soil.
Two rovers in operation in the LUNA Hall in Cologne
(Image: DLR (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0))
If humans are to be permanently present on the Moon in the future, water will be an indispensable raw material: for drinking and, broken down into its components, as a source of breathable air and fuel. Deposits of water ice on the Moon have already been detected. According to its own statements, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) is already testing the search for ice beneath the surface in the Moon Hall in Cologne.
The Luna Moon Center is a 700-square-meter, 9-meter-high hall on the DLR premises in Cologne where spaceflight actors can train for lunar missions. To achieve this, the hall is covered with a layer of simulated lunar dust, regolith, up to 3 meters thick.
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"We buried a large Plexiglas sheet in it that has a radar signature for water ice," explained Thomas Uhlig, project manager of the LUNA Hall, when heise online visited the Luna Hall in the spring. As part of the Polar Explorer campaign, Nicole Schmitz's team from the DLR Institute of Space Research successfully searched for water ice – or rather, the Plexiglas sheet – in the lunar soil using two rovers and mapped the find. The team will now evaluate the data.
Two Rovers in Operation
"If we want to find and map water ice on the Moon, we need to be very mobile on the surface. That's why we had two rovers in operation, equipped with special instruments," Schmitz explains. "The combination of different methods offers advantages and proved to be particularly reliable here as well."
One method used was radar, which detects the contrast between regolith and Plexiglas or ice. In addition, a seismic method was employed: a seismic source (Portable Active Seismic Source, PASS) generates vibrations in the ground. These deform a glass fiber cable laid within it. The tiny deformations of the glass fiber allow conclusions to be drawn about the subsurface structure. Such a cable could also be laid on the Moon.
Besuch in der LUNA-Halle in Köln (15 Bilder)
heise online/ wpl
)Simulated Lunar Dust
The Cologne hall is operated by the DLR and the European Space Agency (ESA). The landscape represents the conditions at the South Pole of the Moon, which is considered a potential landing and settlement site, with simulated lunar dust and extreme lighting conditions. In a further expansion stage, a system simulating the reduced gravity on the Moon is to be installed starting next year.
"We want to offer Europe, industry, astronauts, and research institutions the opportunity to train in a building under reproducible conditions, independent of the weather," Uhlig told heise online. However, the hall is also open to non-Europeans: the Japanese space company iSpace, for example, prepared its ultimately failed Moon landing there.
(wpl)
