Latest Regolith Stories

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Three-dimensional printing is growing rampantly and the European Space Agency (ESA) has decided to utilize the up-and-coming technology to build a base on the moon using lunar soil. ESA is partnering with industrial partners, including architects Foster + Partners, to see if the idea of building a lunar habitat on the moon is a feasible one. Foster + Partners created a dome with a cellular structured wall that could help to shield...

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online The prospect of finding frozen water on the moon has several companies scrambling to stake a claim in “them thar lunar hills.” "This is like the gold rush that led to the settlement of California," said Phil Metzger, a physicist who leads the Granular Mechanics and Regolith Operations Lab, part of Kennedy Space Center's Surface Systems Office. "This is the water rush." Water has already been found on asteroids and its...

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online European researchers are in the process of building an unmanned probe that would travel to the moon, where it would search for subsurface ice on the lunar surface, within the next six years. The $800 million (£500 million) project, which is detailed in an October 21 article by Telegraph Science Correspondent Richard Gray, is currently being planned by the European Space Agency (ESA) and is on pace to take place sometime in 2018....

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online Water molecules discovered in soil samples collected from the moon could have indirectly originated from the sun, claim the authors of a new study published Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience. The researchers studied soil samples brought back from the lunar surface during the Apollo missions, and discovered that they contained compounds known as hydroxyls, which are essentially substructures of an H2O molecule, according to...

Alan McStravick for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The year was 1998. The Red Hot Chili Peppers had just parted ways with Dave Navarro. The world was introduced to Britney Spears. And the movie Armageddon bested all other films at the box office. It seems fitting that the same year that gave us Michael Bay’s fictional interpretation of how we should deal with an asteroid coming towards us would be the same year that the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) project...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online We have even hardly begun to scratch the surface of Mars, yet scientists are already trying to find ways to be eco-friendly on the Red Planet. Scientists are looking to regolith, or alien dirt, to determine whether it can be used to help build shielding for ground stations. Chiara La Tessa is manager of experiments in biophysics at GSI. She said the need for this research is to help shave off some of the weight associated with...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online If all goes well in the next test, alien soil could be a key ingredient to a new generation of heat shield being developed. Scientists are about to start an important test next week to see if whether a heat shield made up of soil from the moon, Mars or an asteroid would be able to protect a spacecraft from Earth's atmosphere. NASA is looking into the possibility of creating a heat shield with alien soil so that future spacecraft...

NASA is conducting a nine-day field test starting Tuesday outside Hilo, Hawaii, to evaluate new exploration techniques for the surface of the moon. These mission simulations, known as analog missions, are performed at extreme and often remote Earth locations to prepare for robotic and human missions to extraterrestrial destinations. The In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) analog mission is a collaboration of NASA partners, primarily the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), with help from the...

HILO, Hawaii, July 17, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA is conducting a nine-day field test starting Tuesday outside Hilo, Hawaii, to evaluate new exploration techniques for the surface of the moon. These mission simulations, known as analog missions, are performed at extreme and often remote Earth locations to prepare for robotic and human missions to extraterrestrial destinations. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) The In-Situ Resource Utilization...

  Japanese scientists have determined that the most common meteorites found on Earth are born from stony asteroids. The Earth-bound asteroids, also known as ordinary chondrites, are among the most primitive objects in the solar system.  The researchers said that the discovery means these asteroids have been recording a long and rich history of early solar system events. Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched the Hayabusa spacecraft in 2003 to sample the surface of an...