Regolith Simulants

This work is of interest for organizations interested in simulating one or more properties of planetary regolith in a laboratory environment.

Published Research

Amos, C. C., M. Prasad, K. M. Cannon, and C. B. Dreyer (2024), Velocity Measurements of Icy Powdered Rock and Implications for Seismic Resource Exploration on the Moon. Icarus, 433, 116509.

Johnson, D. K. M., E. Asenath-Smith, R. Lieblappen, C. B. Dreyer, K. M. Cannon, M. Shope, and I. Jehn (2025), Microstructure of Icy Lunar Regolith Simulants. The Journal of Physical Chemistry C, 129, 2152–2164.

Amos, C. C., M. Prasad, K. M. Cannon, and C. B. Dreyer (2024), Velocity Measurements of Powdered Rock at Low Confining Pressures and Comparison to Lunar Shallow Seismic Velocity. JGR Planets, 129, e2024JE008287.

Johnson, D. K. M., C. B. Dreyer, K. M. Cannon, and G. Sowers (2024), Pressure Sintered icy lunar regolith Simulant (PSS): A novel icy regolith simulant production method. Icarus, 410, 115885.

Britt, D. T., K. M. Cannon, K. Donaldson Hanna, J. Hogancamp, O. Poch, P. Beck, D. Martin, J. Escrig, L. Bonal, and P. T. Metzger (2019). Simulated asteroid materials based on carbonaceous chondrite mineralogies. MAPS, 54, 2067-2082.

Metzger, P. T., D. T. Britt, S. Covey, C. Schultz, K. M. Cannon, K. D. Grossman, G. D. Mantovani, and R. P. Mueller. Measuring the Fidelity of Asteroid Regolith and Cobble Simulants. Icarus, 321, 632-646.

Cannon, K. M., D. T. Britt, T. M. Smith, R. F. Fritsche, and D. Batcheldor (2019), Mars Global Simulant MGS-1: A Rocknest-based open standard for basaltic martian soil simulants. Icarus, 317, 470-478.

Capabilities

This line of work has involved designing regolith simulants, producing them (including at scale), and characterizing them compared to planetary regolith samples (rover data, meteorites, and/or loaned samples from NASA curation). Regolith simulants go back to the pre-Apollo era, when different terrestrial rocks were ground up into powders in anticipation of what the Apollo astronauts would encounter. Better information from sample return and new instruments like rover-based X-ray diffraction allows us to prepare more accurate simulants, increasing the chances that missions will be successful.

The focus here has been to understand what properties of the planetary regolith actually need to be captured by the simulant, then to design and produce a simulant that meets those needs. It's also involved evaluating current simulants and cataloging them.

In some cases, extremely high fidelity is required, which often involves designing a mineralogically accurate simulant. But for example if the simulant is going to be melted, then the chemistry is much more important. If it's to be driven over, then the geotechnical properties matter a lot. But does a simulant advertised as "geotechnical" actually match the geotechnical properties of regolith?

Past work has included designing all the simulants originally sold by Exolith Lab and then Space Resources Technologies, designing custom simulants for different companies, and inventing creative types of simulants like for icy lunar regolith, lunar regolith as it behaves in vacuum (due to surface cleanliness of the grains), and extensive testing with simulants.

Adapting it to your work

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