[SpaceProgram] Introduction & Leightweight probes

[cole santos]

Is its chemical composition accurate?

On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 6:59 AM, Bradley Grzesiak <listrophy at gmail.com> wrote:
> Speaking as a former ORBITEC employee and lunar mining engineer, I can say a
> few things about the regolith simulant.
>
> First, it's *really* fine. Like affect-your-lungs fine. I recommend a simple
> $2 paper mask, which should suffice. Second, it's not quite as
> microscopically jagged as the real stuff, but they do a pretty good job.
> Basically, you're not really going to get any agglutinates (fused grains)
> that you would from real regolith.
>
> But it's the closest (by far) you'll get anywhere. And no, they don't just
> dig it up and ship it out. There's quite a bit of post-processing to get the
> correct grain-size distribution.
>
> :brad
>
>
> On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 11:49 AM, cole santos <cksantos85 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> moon regolith, epic, thanks for the link
>>
>> that could be useful for many projects. we have some areas here in
>> hawaii that are commonly used as moon and mars simulation areas.
>> Mostly old lava flows.
>>
>> On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 6:27 AM, Luke Weston <reindeerflotilla at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> >> What would be interesting: Grow bacteria on nothing but moon soil.
>> >> Taake
>> >> some soil, add water, atmosphere and bacteria. Will they thrive? -> If
>> >> so,
>> >> phosphorus etc. is in the moon soil.
>> >>
>> >
>> > We already know a great deal about the geology and mineralogy of the
>> > moon, and the chemical composition of the lunar regolith.
>> >
>> > There's no wheel there that needs to be reinvented, and no fundamental
>> > new discovery that needs to be made.
>> >
>> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_soil
>> >
>> > You can also commercially buy standard JSC-1A lunar regolith simulant
>> > from Orbitec, which is interesting:
>> >
>> > http://www.orbitec.com/store/simulant.html
>> >
>> > They even have Mars regolith simulant too :)
>> >
>> > There is some existing research and literature in this area,
>> > indicating that certain types of life, such as cyanobacteria, will
>> > grow on lunar regolith (or simulant) when water (and other factors
>> > such as light, if appropriate) is added along with an appropriate
>> > artificial atmosphere.
>> >
>> > For example:
>> >
>> > http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2008/pdf/1673.pdf
>> >
>> > If you got some regolith simulant, autoclaved it or something to make
>> > sure it's sterile (along with all your other equipment and vessel, got
>> > some sort of benign sample of appropriate bacteria or cyanobacteria
>> > from an appropriate biology supplier (ATCC or whatever the go-to
>> > people are for that sort of thing these days) and supplied an
>> > appropriate gaseous atmosphere from a gas cylinder, and added some
>> > distilled water, and supplied some light on the vessel, I suppose it
>> > wouldn't be too difficult to reproduce such an experiment.
>> > Interesting.
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>
>
>
> --
> Bradley Grzesiak
> co-founder, bendyworks llc
> http://bendyworks.com/
>
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