Magnetic and Microwave Susceptibilities of Lunar Simulants and Their Constituents for Use in Creating Building Materials via Beneficiation

The lunar surface is covered with dusty regolith with mixed minerals down to a well-known depth. The minerals have different physical and chemical properties and cannot be treated in bulk. It is important that we understand the properties of major components in the regolith. During lunar landings there will be a large amount of surface erosion and scouring due to plume-surface interaction. The ejected material can damage the instruments within reach. A proposed solution is to construct a landing pad, and a leading method is microwave sintering. The measured magnetic susceptibilities of lunar minerals are found to fall under three distinct ranges which facilitates magnetic beneficiation. We find that higher magnetic susceptibility correlates higher microwave susceptibility. This allowed us to investigate microwave sintering by using the magnetic portion as an energy trap and nonmagnetic portion as a wall. Results from the experiments with variations of these mechanical heat trap systems show that we can achieve deep reduction in the energy and thus also the time and cost of sintering the lunar landing pad.