Simulants at Mines

Regolith simulants are a staple of technology development and hardware testing for lunar, martian and asteroid applications.  But are the simulants people produce and use actually appropriate for the tasks at hand?

At the Colorado School of Mines, we’re working on a meticulous approach to developing and characterizing regolith simulants for every planetary body and for every use case. We have prototypes of general-purpose simulants for the Moon (highlands & mare), Mars (an updated version of MGS-1), and carbonaceous asteroids.  We’re also working on a special-purpose simulant that would accurately capture the extremely poor flowability of lunar regolith.

Simulant Certification and Standards

We’re building an objective certification and reporting system for regolith simulants.  Previous systems like the Figure of Merit and Fit to Use table were not user friendly: the Figures of Merit did not include recommended values to compare simulants to, and the Fit to Use tables from the Constellation Era involve simulants that are no longer available.

Our simulant certification system will take in analytical data as inputs (bulk chemistry, particle size distribution, etc.) and automatically generate easy to digest simulant report cards that highlight appropriate use cases and deficiencies.

We’re building up laboratory capabilities to do all analyses in-house for certifying simulants. This includes:

• Particle size distribution
• 3D particle shape parameters, and size-dependent shape
• Quantitative mineralogy and bulk chemistry
• Grain density
• Magnetic susceptibility