Development and Application of Martian Regolith Simulant Using Volcanic Material from Banks Peninsula, New Zealand

Abstract

Martian regolith and rock may one day be used for building material to support longterm habitation on Mars. Despite several martian simulants being available, the capability of accurately matching a wide variety of reported grain size distributions coupled to the regolith’s chemical character for specific sites on Mars needs to be advanced before producing large quantities of material for material synthesis experimentation on Earth. Here, we use volcanic material (i.e. olivine basalt and basaltic glass) from Banks Peninsula, New Zealand, to demonstrate an applied approach to matching reported size distributions on Mars. The olivine basalt and basaltic glass were crushed, washed and combined to produce a particle size distribution representative of the Columbia Hills region of the Gusev Crater. As New Zealand has a wide variety of geologic material similar to Mars, we are in the process of acquiring rocks ranging from extrusive volcanics to serpentinites with the intent to provide ‘tailored’ simulant to aid in civil engineering applications.