Building a Lunar or Martian Launch Pad with In Situ Materials: Recent Laboratory and Field Studies

Building launch pads on extraterrestrial surfaces has gained interest as a way to improve landing safety and mitigate dust problems caused by launch and landing. On Mars, a landing pad may be a necessity for the safe landing of a large human-carrying vehicle. There have been many proposed surface stabilization technologies, and evaluation of the technologies uses regolith simulants and terrestrial analogue sites. Recent work on the lunar simulants used in sintering studies and results from recent field demonstrations are presented here. Laboratory studies on simulants focused on determining how the composition of the simulant affected sintering. The glass content of the lunar simulant was found to be a key parameter in determining when a simulant sintered. Field demonstrations of a solar concentrator and a resistive heating sintering system are described. Field demonstrations factor in not only the simulant but also larger-scale thermal effects that are not present in laboratory tests.