The technology of lunar regolith environment construction on Earth

Abstract

Lunar regolith plays an extremely important role in the establishment of permanent human residence or robotic industries on the Moon. Lunar regolith environment construction may accelerate the progress of lunar engineering, biology, medicine, and agriculture for future colonization of the Moon. Although advances in investigating and simulating lunar regolith have achieved unprecedented progress, producing simulated lunar regolith environment on Earth with adequate fidelity remains challenging. Inspired by traditional Chinese tofu making process, we proposed a comprehensive methodology to construct lunar regolith environment on Earth, and developed theoretical models to illustrate gas and heat transfer behavior in this particulate and porous material. Our study, proven to be effective, reveals a complex but generic gas and heat transfer mechanism in granular lunar regolith simulant, and can be readily applied to construct experimental regolith environments for lunar scientific research.