Lunar Islands

At the beginning of the new year, the LUNAR In-Situ LANding Structures (LUNAR ISLANDS) project, funded by the European Space Agency (ESA), started at the Chair of Space Systems at Technische Universität Dresden. With the goal of increasing exploration of the Moon by both unmanned and manned missions, challenges already known from previous lunar missions will arise again in future missions. Due to the lack of an atmosphere and thus also the absence of weathering, sharp-edged particles of lunar regolith, which are whirled up by the exhaust jets of the engines, pose a hazard to the landing vehicles themselves, but also to the surrounding infrastructure.

In order to ensure sustainable exploration of the Moon, these risks must be reduced. One possibility here is in-situ landing sites and dust deflectors. Under the leadership of the TU Dresden and in collaboration with the Technical University of Berlin, the Technical University of Braunschweig, the University of Glasgow and the French research institution ONERA, the effectiveness of such structures in containing high velocity particles resulting from the exhaust jet-regolith interaction will be determined.

Since replicating the environmental conditions of the lunar surface on Earth is a major challenge, both numerical and experimental methods will be used to verify the numerical results and extend the experimental results. The objectives are to analyse the effects of the interaction of regolith particles and exhaust gas jets, to fabricate and characterise material samples, and to investigate the structural effects of hot gas tests in order to design landing sites and deflectors that effectively reduce the risks posed by regolith particles.