A Review of Geotechnical Properties of Lunar Regolith Simulants

During preparations for the Apollo missions, regolith simulants were used for design, experiments and prototype development (e.g. the Lunar Roving Vehicle). The soils were not high-fidelity simulants, but were of great use during design and testing, leading to successful Apollo missions. When lunar exploration plans again were introduced in the late 1980s, new simulants were produced and widely distributed for research activities. Only small quantities of those simulants are still available. Future Lunar exploration will require re-examination of existing regolith simulants as well as the development and production of new simulants. This paper reviews properties of two existing lunar regolith simulants, MLS-1 and JSC-1, to provide the research community with a background for increased understanding of previous research and planned exploration methods. Both simulants discussed have variations from lunar regolith and were tested in the terrestrial environment, which can have significant effects on results. The variations between terrestrial simulants and lunar regolith and the related engineering implications are discussed.